2.3 Creating Community by Honoring Diversity
Kimberly Puttman
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
—Dr. Maya Angelou, American author, poet, and civil rights activist (Figure 2.21)
Poet Maya Angelou sets the tone for this section. All of us have something to learn about diversity. None of us will do this work perfectly. And yet, as we learn more, we can be better. Let’s learn how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPqVit6TJjw
These discussions of structural inequality, a condition where one category of people is attributed an unequal status in relation to another category of people (United Nations N.d.), begin to help us understand why we have social problems in the first place. They also help us understand why social problems are hard to solve. But how can we use these models to start making a difference in our communities today?
We can take action at the level of microaggressions. According to Tiffany Alvoid, JD, an attorney who graduated from the UCLA School of Law, microaggression is “a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group” (Alvoid 2019). In the video in Figure 2.22, Alvoid provides examples of several microaggressions. One common microaggression is asking, “Where are you from?” particularly when a White person is talking to a person of color who speaks with an accent.
In another example, a Latinx student said they were serving a customer in a local restaurant. The customer, who was White, said, “You are one of the good ones,” to compliment the quality of their work. This compliment implied that everyone who looked like them wasn’t “good.” Another microaggression is to say, “I’m so OCD,” when in fact, you are just stressed out.
All of us can commit microaggressions, particularly when we are acting in our privilege. All of us can experience microaggressions, but people with less privilege experience them more. Microaggressions are a form of discrimination and marginalization. Some people don’t use the term microaggression any more, because they assert that all discrimination matters.
Living Diversity Well
We have now explored models of inequality as concepts and seen how they work when applied to daily life. What norms of behavior do we choose to use when we interact in our classroom and in our wider community? When we focus only on differences, we polarize our community. It becomes a situation of “us” versus “them.” By bringing interdependence and relationship into our conversations with each other, we can bridge our differences. We use our collective diversity as a communal strength. The following is a list of suggestions to support you in managing your own reactions and any conflict that may arise as we tackle these challenging concepts together:
- Breathe. When you notice your breathing, you notice your own physical and emotional reaction to the