AN INCIDENT OF BIAS, PREJUDICE, and OPPRESSION

During the 2012 republican primary, presidential candidate Rick Santorum was talking about welfare and was caught making a microaggression against African Americans. He said "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them other people's money, I want to make them better by giving them the opportunity to earn their own money."  Being a member of the dominant culture as a white male Santorum tries to be politically correct, but his hidden bias slip out.  He would never intentionally try to marginalize a potential voting demographic, but he was caught in a moment when he wasn't guarding everything he said.  Whether it was intentional or not, it is important to look for these microaggressions when deciding whom to vote for. 

This incident diminishes equity by enforcing the stereotypes that say all African Americans are poor, on welfare, and not working.  It also leaves out the fact that most people on welfare are white.  This message says because all African Americans are on welfare there is something wrong with them and they need to be fixed.   

I am always angered when conservatives start attacking the public assistance programs, but I was shocked to hear someone in the public eye make a statement that singled out and stereotyped a group of people.  After learning about microaggressions I realize now that our bias and prejudice are not always very conscious and they sneak out even when we have good intentions,not that I think Santorum has good intentions (Laureate Education Inc., 2011).   I am angry that public assistance programs are made to look like handouts to lazy people with no desire to work.  When in fact many people receiving assistance are children and elderly.  And many people working these days are on some kind of public assistance.   

I think in order to ensure equity people who make mistakes like this should accept them as mistakes and correct the information.  We need to address the hidden privileges that we have in the dominant culture and how that affects our political decisions (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).  In this particular situation Santorum could not admit to possible voters that he obviously has some prejudice that he needs to work on in regards to people of color.  Instead he explains how he isn't a bigot because he supports African American colleges in Washington and how he didn't actually say "black people" he said, "blah," because he usually says "African American."  We need to change how we look at public assistance and people of color.  

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).

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Microaggressions in everyday life [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

One more microaggression I saw on my Facebook feed...