Practicing Awareness of Microagressions

Wow!  What a week to practice my personal awareness of microagression.  There was a staff member at my work that accused another co-worker of calling her a skinny bitch.  The person that was accused of saying "skinny bitch" is an obese woman and the "skinny bitch" is an employee that is struggle to gain weight.  If in fact the obese woman called her "skinny bitch" then this would be a classic case of microassult.  Microassault, which is an overt, deliberate, hostile act intended to hurt the person on a conscious level, calling someone a nigger or a Jap, purposely discriminating against the individual (Laureate, 2011). 

Additionally, this week we received a complaint that one of our trainers sent home all the people that showed up for class based on skin color.  If the people were black they were allowed to stay for the training and if they were white they had to leave.  At this time we are still doing some phone calls to determine if this act did in fact happen or not.  This plus the skinny bitch in one week were almost to much for me to deal with at work this week.  However, they did give me some content for this weeks blog assignment.

Discrimination comes in many forms and effects people in many different ways.  This particular situation developed when the co-workers were discussing choosing the best meals.  Both people in this situation need to choose a nutritional meal, but need to focus on different aspects of the meal.  The obese person jokingly said, "yeah, right like you have to be careful of the meals your choose look at yourself."  The skinny person in this situations perception was you are a skinny bitch and why do you have to worry about nutritious meals.  She struggles daily to consume proper nutrition and get her weight to a healthy level just the same as the obese person struggles daily to get her weight to a healthy level.  They both have similar struggles, but the microassult was the "skinny bitch" remark.  At this point in time it is a she said, she said situation because there were not any other people around. I am interested to know what others think about this microassult.

My observation experiences this week were just to heighten my awareness of the effects of discrimination, prejudice and or stereotypes of people.  The forms of discrimination that I come in contact the most is the discrimination of either socioeconomic status or education status.  I work at the University and we collect workforce data on child care center and family child care home providers across the state of Oklahoma.  The people that we speak to on the phone day in and day out often have less education and make less money so this type of discrimination I have to work on with my staff on a daily basis. 

Reference

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011).  Microagressions in Everyday Life. [DVD]. Perspectives on Diversity and Equity.  Baltimore, MD: Author.