Reflection 3: Implicit Associations
As I learned about microaggression in class, I felt that microaggression happens everyday in the form of physical, verbal, and environmental. It could either intentional or unintentional that make an individual "foreignness" to society and impact their mental health.
It's a huge reflection to learn that microaggression affects someone's mental health because I had mental health in the past and understand how the effect could challenge a person's mind. I also thought of implicit bias or microaggression as people being prejudice toward a marginalized group.
This was my thought when hearing fellow classmates' involvement in implicit bias in their lives. For example, one of my classmates had her extensions pulled to see if it could come off easily which is a microassault.
Another example of implicit bias occurred from the "Under Our Skin" project when a person walk up to Varisha and ask questions regarding her hijab. She felt offended about the question because it was a tradition to wear it as a part of her culture.
As for my experience with implicit bias, it was exceedingly rare because I haven't deal with unconscious stereotypes in my life. I was told by my father to not react violently when confronting implicit bias to not make the situation worst.
He told me to brush it off or counter the implicit bias with a harmless joke. My parent's experience of implicit bias help as an individual to become a person and change my perception of how to interact with implicit bias.
After learning about implicit bias from class and hearing personal experiences from other people, I feel comfortable in sharing my knowledge about implicit bias without thinking about it. I feel that once your able to understand about implicit bias, you know how to change the approach of asking specific questions.
Another term I haven't touch on is white privilege. I read McIntosh's article about white privilege and agree that most there are more privileges out there instead of only white privilege. It could happen with men getting more privileges than women or wealthier individuals having more opportunities than people in poverty.
We can't deny to pretend that white privilege don't exist, but to feel compassion to people outside your group. McIntosh made a metaphor about white privilege with having a bank account. "I didn't ask for it. I can't be blamed for it, but I can decide to put in the service of weakening the system of white privilege," McIntosh said.
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