It has been known that
people don’t always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t
always ‘know their minds’.
Hence, people’s unconscious verbal behaviors—microaggressions, can
cause feelings of marginalization, inferiority, and/or unsetting emotions in
others even though no offense is intended.
I vividly remembered an incident happened to me when I was in the
States, doing my undergraduate study.
One faculty member approached me, wanting to know about me. I told him that it was fine to address
me as Wong. Trying to be humor, he
smiled and said, “Wrong? Mr.
Wrong?” “No,” I replied. “I am Wong”, I affirmed. “Oh! I see, you are Wong”, he said with a grin. I smiley replied, “Yes”, but at
the bottom of my heart I did not feel good. I felt I was teased and insulted. Since then, I tried to avoid him, not wanting to be around
him. I believe this could be an
example of a microaggression.
After learning about microaggressions, I shared with my colleagues
this notion of verbal behaviors.
They agreed that microaggressions do happen everyday and
everywhere. I told them it is imperative to aware of and detect examples of microaggression. By doing so, we learn to be more sensitive towards our verbal
behaviors, preventing us to discriminate and stereotype others. Besides, under our caring and protection, we
should stop others to cause young children to be the target of microaggressions.
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