The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

     With all the racial injustice going on right now there are several memories that are being created pertaining to prejudice and oppression. A personal experience for me experiencing biases is being a female security officer. I had a man yell at me about me doing my job, but I followed protocol and did not engage further with the man. After yelling at me he proceeded to approach me as if he were going to hit me but when my male colleague walked over to my side the man quickly walked away. 

     Another experienced was being the youngest director for a summer camp and having a parent yell at me saying I was young and did not know what I was doing. He then said his child was being discriminated against because he could not go on a field trip unless a parent went with him. This parent was informed several times of the guidelines for our camp and at this point the child had kicked counselors and thrown furniture. My age had nothing to do with the rules set in place and we also said that his child needed a parent to attend the field trip with him and he could go. The issue was the inconvenience for the parents to take off from work.

     With both experiences I felt singled out because of my gender and age. I was grateful for witnesses who could vouch for me in saying I kept my composure and followed the procedures because I am not sure what would have happened. In both experiences the customers were irate and I had to defend myself in a professional manner. This brought about feelings of anger but also gratitude. I often thought if I had been older or even a man would things have gone differently. I was grateful because I did not feel alone despite what had happened.

     I believe in order for the situations to have changed the men would have had to change their point of view. Trying to receive equity is not always easy. Equity is fair treatment, considering the capacities of individuals, while not discriminating because of their identity (Derman-Sparks, 2010). I also view this situations as what happens when people act off of their emotions. The parent later came back and apologize, and we were able to have a conversation about the trip and he also later shared that his child had special needs. I think maybe he was worried about his child being labeled and chose not to share this information. When he did share, we were able to offer extra assistance for his child through inclusion services. We were able to get an extra counselor so when the child needed one on one time away from the large group, he was able to have that quiet time. We must take time for understanding and actually discussing these issues.

References

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).