Essay on boy o boy

Submitted By pmdy
Words: 651
Pages: 3

The term microaggression is often described as being a brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignity, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicates a hostile, derogatory, negative, or racial slight towards someone. These microaggressions happen daily and can even go unnoticed some times. If one takes the time to look for these microaggressions one can see just how remarkably easy it can be to miss them, or even use them by mistake. Over the past week I listened and tried to key in on finding microaggressions and I was shocked to learn just how common they are. Over the past week while listening for microaggressions I heard a couple. I heard one person say, ”Where are you really from” to an Asian student, as if they didn’t believe them when they said New Jersey. The student responded with “America.” Another microaggression I heard was “You don’t speak Spanish?” This was asked in surprise to a Hispanic student who responded that just because he was Hispanic did not necessarily mean he spoke Spanish. These instances of microaggression where very shocking to hear when I really thought about it. While it was weird hearing other people becoming the victim of microaggressions it was even weirder when it happened to me. While observing for microaggressions I found that even I was subject to them. Before looking for them I never really took notice to microaggressions, especially ones directed at me. I had never really thought about the underlying tone to some comments made to me, but after looking for them and thinking about them, I realized I have been subject to microaggressions for a long time. A big topic of microaggression that has been thrown at me is my skin color. For my whole life I have always had darker skin. Where I grew up there was very little diversity. People would often ask me if I was part black or Hispanic. When I told them that I was Italian they would say things like, “You’re too athletic to be white”, or “You’re too tan to be just white.” I always kind of just took comments like that sort of as compliments. Looking at them now they kind of had a bit of offensive undertones. Interestingly enough I hadn’t heard anything like that in a while until this week. I was in New York City with my girlfriend Nicolle and we were passing by the Empire State Building. A promoter for the