Michael Kwan
I think that microaggressions and
other inequalities will inevitably persist largely due to the dominant middle
class culture of power because of the prevalence it has in society.
Microaggressions is when someone makes a statement about another person that is
not intended to come off as racist, but the subtle wordings can impact the
second person more than the person asking the question would think.
The middles class culture of power is
very interesting because it can happen in classrooms, when children can
recognize that they may have more power than another student and take advantage
of that. In this case, that power comes from socioeconomic status, where if you
are in the middles class, you represent the majority of society. It is also interesting that Lisa Delpit also
says that sometimes, there are unspoken rules that people tend to abide to just
because they recognize someone of power. If you tell a student in a
straightforward manner, she says that it is even easier to fall into the
culture of power. However, the last point that Lisa points out seems to most
directly fit into the discussion of microaggressions. It is that people who have
more power are not as aware of the power that they have over the other students
as someone who does not have as much power.
Connecting this to
microaggressions, this demonstrates that the middle class, the people in power,
do not always understand the complete impact that they have on other people.
For example, they may talk in slangs or talk as if they were black to come off
as funny, but it would actually be really offensive to black people. Also,
little things like asking “What are you?”, whose true intentions is to merely
understand a friend better by understanding their race or ethnicity could be
interpreted differently to the person this question is posed to. They may think
that this question is asking them if they actually belong here, and that their
race is a big factor to who they are and if they will be accepted into society,
or the classroom setting.
No comments:
Post a Comment