It is hard sometimes for me to recognize microaggressions because I find that I have made a habit for myself of simply ignoring what I feel to be ignorant comments and/or behavior because I know it is not applicable to who I am. However, there was one that I can remember clearly when I went to have my daughter’s picture printed and the girl behind the counter looked and me and looked at the original picture of my daughter and the girl said to me, “Do you want us to make her color more like yours?” I was very confused by this because I found it to be very ignorant. I told her, “no, she looks exactly how she’s supposed to look.” I felt like asking this girl if she was stupid because why would she think to ask me such a silly question and I realized that my emotions were heightened at this particular time so I just walked out. People don’t realize how different people can look from generation to generation. It’s so important to look around you and take notice of the wonderfully different faces that you see and not think that just because their color is different doesn’t mean they don’t belong to the same family. One question I asked myself after having this experience was, "are we still teaching our children to be this ignorant and to be this unaware of the diversity that we live in and around everyday?" I would have hoped that I had the opportunity to teach my own daughter to be enlightened about the differences in this world and what they teach all of us.
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