This article discusses the problems of racial and gender macroaggression faced by students on a predominantly white college campus. One of the work topics is devoted to the perception of black people as dangerous and threatening, regardless of their characteristics. Another important topic of the article revealed that Latin American women are often considered sexually accessible and exotic. The third key topic was devoted to the difficulties faced by white women in science, area in which men stereotypically dominate.
The problem of racial and gender discrimination for me, as for a white man in a predominantly white college, was not unexpected and new. However, the article expanded my knowledge about the manifestation of microaggression towards minorities. I became aware of the hardships that members of minorities face and which I could have missed earlier because of my privileges. For example, black students are forced to deal with the omnipresence of the authorities on their floor regularly (McCabe 139). I was surprised by how much microaggression Latin American female students encounter when refusing courtship from white men and how the friendly attitude instantly changes to a “Go-Back-to-Your-Country” one (McCabe 140). The experience of white women studying subjects with gender imbalance did not expand but strengthened my knowledge about college conditions. In general, the article revealed that even in institutions where racial and gender discrimination is comparably low and controlled by the administration, representatives of minorities have a regular negative experience.
The article about microaggression towards minorities was important for me as for a white person with extremely different experience. A large group of students faces regular passive aggression, and such behavior may be ignored or even provoked by a privileged group. That is the reason why such studies should be conducted regularly to raise awareness of the problem among all students, especially in pre-dominant white educational institutions.
Works Cited
McCabe, Janice. “Racial and gender microaggressions on a predominantly-White campus: Experiences of Black, Latina/o and White undergraduates.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 16, no. 1-2, 2009, pp. 133-151.