Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

        Racial microaggressions create an unfriendly and invalidating environment for people of color saps their spiritual and psychic energies, and their cumulative nature can result in depression, frustration, anger, rage, loss of self esteem, anxiety, etc.  This microaggression can also occur nonverbally, and their message conveyed to persons of color is that their contribution is irrelevant.

        I, along with my son traveled to Washington DC some time ago for his internship, on a small airliner.  During this time, the plane was not full and there were plenty of empty seats.  One of the flight attendants, which were white, came over and told us we could sit anywhere because the plane was not going to be full.  So, me and my son decided to sit on the front row, we had more leg room and felt very comfortable for the both of us.  All of a sudden, the flight attendant stated if we could go a couple seats back and let a couple sit on the front row. 

        A course this couple was white and wore business type style clothing and appeared to me to look wealthy. We both looked at each other with a negative reaction and asked the question “Are we being singled out because we are black?”  I wish you could have seen the look on her face, with such a surprise.  I felt resentment and angry at the same time, because we felt like we was treated like second class citizens…mainly because of our skin color.  The flight attendant had a reason for every allegation I made towards her.  I was so mad at this lady, and wanted to tell her a piece of my mind; this really left a bad taste in my mouth.  Most white Americans see themselves as decent and good human beings some just possess a biased racial attitude and engage in discriminatory behaviors.