The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

 

 

When my older sister’s fiancé visited her at home, it was not unusual for the two of us to play. He would take on the role of big brother playing with his younger brother. Then, I grew up and was not enticed to play like a boy anymore. Having lost a playmate, I understood that my sister’s fiancé could be disappointed. However, the way he expressed his disappointment made me feel that he had lost any interest in me and that I had become invisible because I was a girl. This is what he said or what I remember him saying “It’s too bad that I can’t play with Marie anymore the way I did before when I could play with her like a boy.” This gender microaggression exemplifies an institutional prejudice toward girls/women: girls/women measure less than boys/men, and boys/men represent the valuable segment of society. A little later, the same young man not liking the cleanliness of the bathroom exclaimed “With three girls in the house, how can the bathroom not be clean?” Thanks to my future brother in law, my future was clearly outlined and I had better start right learning the ropes of a perfect house wife. Unfortunately, each incident struck me with full force and I was unable to turn them into opportunities for greater equity.  It is only after turning forty that I started to empower myself and whenever I felt strong enough attempted to change incidents of that sort into teaching moments for equity. For example, one of my daughter’s friends whose family enjoyed the help of a hired woman remarked one day as I was cleaning behind the kitchen sink tap “You are finally cleaning this” and I assured him that he could feel free to take care of this whenever he felt like it. Not highlighting the young man’s rudeness and offering him to notice his prejudice provided a better teaching opportunity.

 With the knowledge of how I have been influenced to believe prejudices toward women in my childhood, as an educator I strive to recognize gender prejudices in children’s literature, movies, and television shows. Although raising questions each time I witness an inequity, I have to be mindful not to impose my views on others since my personal views would then become biases. Rather, engaging a conversation on the meaning and purpose of a page in a book may help raise awareness and shift behaviors. In these interactions, my own biases are kept in balance, enriched, and redefined with other people’s views.      

 

Another example of institutional prejudice can be found in the movie “Men of Honor” (2000) where Carl Brashear, an African-American, dreams to become a Master Chief Navy Diver.  Brashear is confronted with racism and has to overcome many hardships and obstacles.  As I was looking for information on the movie and the book written by David Robbins, I came upon a TV review raising a doubt about the main character’s integrity, therefore invalidating the purpose of the movie which to my understanding was to increase awareness on an American coming from a minority group whose dedication to his country and his courage would take him against all odds to the top level of his military career.  Here is the quote from Simels’ review in TVGuide:

“Heroes are hard to find, so it feels churlish to carp about a film that tells the true story of sailor Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who overcame systemic racism to become the U.S. Navy's first African-American deep-sea diver. On the other hand, it's a little odd that nobody involved — certainly not screenwriter Scott Marshall Smith or director George Tillman Jr. — seems to have noticed that it's also the story of a guy who literally cut off a limb to achieve a career goal. No disrespect to the real-life Brashear intended, but reasonable viewers might see this act as more masochistic and creepy than uplifting (Simels, n.a.)”

Interestingly, this article weaves biases and prejudices with positive comments and succeeds in creating a doubt in readers’ mind as to Brashear’s actual intention and the validity of his racial struggle.

Reference Simels, S. (n.a.). TV Guide. Retrieved from:  http://movies.tvguide.com/men-of-honor/review/134888