Practicing Awareness of Microaggression

             

 I wish I had read the blog post assignment before doing the Diversity Profile as I described perhaps the most eye-opening scenario of microaggression from my own standpoint.  

               After studying microaggressions this week, I now am in constant fear that I may have been a giver of microaggression without realizing it. I am an extremely sarcastic person that prefers to crack jokes with someone than hold a simple conversation. While I have had friends of every race, religion, spectrum of the gender scale, and so on, I fear that something I might have said could have been interpreted as microaggression. I never have meant any harm to anyone, both with my actions and with my words, but I could understand how microaggression could be identified from an outsider listening in to a conversation as well. For example, I have two extremely close friends who are both homosexual. We have been best friends throughout college and into our adult lives and would never cause any intentional harm to one another unless we are fighting over who gets the last pizza slice on our Sunday movie nights. However, after reading about microaggression this week, I am better understanding a situation I experienced when I was first engaged to my husband. I had met both my friends at a restaurant and as I have never had female friends, I asked both to be my brides men so that they may stand by me on my special day. I recall the waitresses face as she had come up after my speech and the joyful acceptance from both. I remember she looked insulted and horrified at the situation, but I thought it could be a range of things causing that emotion (a rough personal day, a situation with another table, perhaps even homophobia), but looking back now, I believe that she might have thought I was using microaggression as I asked two homosexual men to stand in a place usually reserved for female friends, perhaps she thought just because they are gay. As these two men are my closest friends in the world, it never held any source of doubt or indecency to ask them to stand by me, yet I could understand where others might perceive microaggression as well. Just as we viewed the scenarios in the discussion, you never know truly what the relationships are like with those individuals as well. What might be viewed as microaggression, could be interpreted differently by one another. That is why it is so important to understand what microaggression is and to perhaps even have a conversation about it with your friends to prevent a scenario like the ones given.