Personal Micro Aggression

The micro aggression I felt this week was when I told three of my friends that I had gotten approval from a publisher to publish the two children’s books I had written.  The first’s response was she “did not want to be a wet blanket but she was sure I should think this through more carefully”. (As if I had not, I have been working on getting up the courage to do this for about ten years.)  The other response was no response.  I am more puzzled by this one than I am the first.  The third said good for you.

My son, William, said that the first was just trying to protect you because we all know you. (Right, I spent time in Guinea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Mali without their presence and nothing they could have prevented occurred.) He also said that he wanted to be in on the marketing so it was done correctly. My feelings are hurt but I know Will is mother-henning me.

What did I learn: to keep quite and not share things that are important to me so readily.  The books have not been published yet but the publisher was pleased with them and I felt good about that.  Now I do not feel so good. Sometimes it is easier to share important things with strangers than it is friends or family.  Will is the only one in my family I have shared this with.  I do not feel so good, I feel as if I am being treated as a child, or an Alzheimer patient.  I am old but not incompetent. 

I am normally an encourager:  cheering on good things that happen and things that come the way for individuals.  I definitely felt stereotyped:  my mother needs me to guide her.  I felt the effects of discrimination in that the answers were negative or none at all.  I have to ask myself, who are my real friends?  What does it mean to be a friend whether it is primary or secondary? 

Definitions of culture and diversity

Friends living together, doing laundry, and laughing 

Do they understand culture and diversity?

My definition of culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions...cognitive constructs and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.

My definition of diversity is to recognize and attempt to appreciate the variety of characteristics that make individuals unique. (Personal Communication)

My definition of culture: The entire collection of a people group's way of thinking or doing things.

My definition of diversity: Distinct differentiation in personality, life experience, and worldview, that both sets people apart from one another and makes them valuable to one another. (Personal Communication)

Culture is the traditions that your ancestors have done for years and what you learn from them. EX English are known for drinking tea and having afternoon cookies. They are hard workers and speak English.

Germans are known for their different foods that they eat such as Sauerkraut and sausage. Singing German songs and celebrating Oktoberfest are a part of the calendar year.

To me diversity is the difference between the different ethnic backgrounds that people come from. It is how we feel about things influenced by our backgrounds and where we live our environment (Personal Communication)

These are the three of the four responses that I received for this assignment.  The fourth person said that she thought culture was the “Good Ole American Way”.  Diversity is being opposed to the American way. This comes from my sister which follows in all the thoughts of my original family. I think that this shows how extreme ideas my family expresses from my ideas and thoughts. 

The first two comes from two completely situations.  The first is a Facebook friend that I have not met but she knows my oldest son and his father. 

The second one is a young lady that teaches at a small university in Atlanta, Georgia and one that I served in Guinea, West Africa for a time. We were roommates and she called me her African mother.  There was only 45 years different in our ages.  Her husband is a teacher at a private high school as the instructor for ancient languages.  This is important as Katherine and Rob have unique perceptions from all the others and people who have had more experience and connect with many cultures.

I think that Katherine, the second one, has more of a concept of how culture and diversity would impact children.  I know this from the fact that some of the people she worked with in Guinea were the children.  She is an ethnomusicalist, analyzing their music and recording, studying and presenting it back to the people.  She not only analyzed their music but fell in love with it.  She stayed in their small villages to learn their ways and observe with her heart the ways of the Guinean people.

Looking at others perspectives on culture made me realize that there are more people than I wanted to admit in my family that have little concept of people outside the range of their contacts.  My cousin, the third definition, and my sister do not take into consideration of others but their ways as the right way.    

My African Party Dress

Imagine the following: A major catastrophe has almost completely devastated the infrastructure of your country. The emergency government has decided that the surviving citizens will be best served if they are evacuated to other countries willing to take refugees. You and your immediate family are among the survivors of this catastrophic event. However, you have absolutely no input into the final destination or in any other evacuation details. You are told that your host country’s culture is completely different from your own, and that you might have to stay there permanently. You are further told that, in addition to one change of clothes, you can only take 3 small items with you. You decide to take three items that you hold dear and that represent your family culture. • A description of the three items you would choose: • The first item I would choose is my Parallel Bible with pictures of my children and grandchildren on the front and back pages. The second item would be my coin collections. The third item would be a blanket, the one my oldest son gave me for Christmas several years ago. • For my extra set of clothing would be one my African dresses because it can also work as a cover. Usually the African women wear two “lapas” and a “iriki”. A lapa is the name for skirt that wraps around and the iriki is the top. I would wear a “irikiba”, full dress. I guess the reason I chose the African dress is because of my similar experiences. I had to choose what I wanted to bring home from Africa with me and much of my personal items had to be left in Africa and sold to other missionaries. • How you would explain to others what each of these items means to you: My Bible represents my faith and having the pictures of my family on the inside pages accomplishes two things in one. My coin collection is important because that was a project my youngest son and I worked on after the divorce. I was working retail at a place that had lots of tourists from other countries and was able to collect coins from many of them. The blanket would be to wrap the children if it were to get cold. • Your feelings if, upon arrival, you were told that you could only keep one personal item and have to give up the other two items you brought with you As long as I had my family with me, I would give up everything, except my Bible. The adults are responsible to keep the children warm. And the coin collection is important to me but not so important that would cause a problem. I also know from experience that when they decide to confiscate something it is not worth it to argue. The more you argue, the more they will go through more and take more. Just leave it alone and they will not give as many problems. • Any insights you gained about yourself, your family culture, diversity, and/or cultural differences in general, as a result of this exercise. The most important insight I have gained is that my faith and family are the most important to me. My attitude and acceptance of the situation is that to take what is given to you and see how you can work through it and teach the children in the family to know that whatever comes, God is with them. I would teach the children to stay close to family but not close the people of their hosting country. If this situation were to be real for my family I know that the cultural differences would be testy for my children but I think that they would not be rude, possibly a little standoffish but never rude. I actually lived through this situation with some African families when the Ivory Coast went to civil war. Families were forced into countries that boarded Ivory Coast and left their country with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some families had to leave their older sons behind as they were forced to be child-soldiers. Many of the families were put into refugee camps and never saw their sons again. The children of the Christian school were preparing to be on holiday when the French soldiers invaded their school and took over the dorms and classrooms as their headquarters. Some of the parents of the missionary older children were in country to bring their children home, “Guinea” for the holiday. The parents were forced to go to a small town nearby and stay there until the French soldiers escorted the school children to be with their parents. The school was permanently closed and the parents had to find another school in another country for their children as Guinea did not have a school for upper class students. This impacted me as a missionary being the teacher of the younger brothers and sisters of the older ones. The stress and fear of these families played hard on them and the fear for their African friends was very deep. As far as the tragedy did not impact me directly but the stories that the children told of seeing friends shot and shooting for their lives sure made an impression.

Perspectives on Diversity and Equity

This course is about diversity and equity. I find this an exciting and interesting topic as I have experienced many different cultures in many different countries. I taught in West Africa as a missionary children's teacher. I love working in Africa although it was very difficult in many ways such as not electricity, no running water, no refrigeration, no vehicle but the people were loving and accepting. I taught in two different language groups with children from 4 different countries, yes, missionaries from 4 different countries. I met diversity right in the face. I was not told when I went there that I was not only going to be living with African people but teaching children from 4 countries. They were all different grades also. This was a great challenge but I would not trade it for anything in the world.