The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

 The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

As a teenager, I began reading more serious novels in my spare time and found myself drawn toward books that were clear examples of prejudices and biases that impacted social equity.  I was most interested in novels that I felt personally connected to from my own prejudices and biases I have experienced, more specifically my family heritage.  I began reading books about the Holocaust because my paternal grandfather directly experienced fleeing from it as a boy in Belgium, when his family immigrated to the United States to save their lives.  My grandfather personally loaned me a book that was an autobiography from a close friend that had also experienced this horrific time in our history.  Sharing stories of true internalized oppression, making various attempts to change his physical appearance out of self-hatred for his physical characteristics as a Jewish person, and fearful for the implications it meant (Sue, 2010).  The true internal struggle this man endured was just mystifying to me as a teenager, and even now.  And the inequity in my grandfather’s life was no different.

My grandfather has also shared his own story about his memories of leaving Belgium.  He went with his mother and brother as small boys onto the ship and recalled wearing a dress and being told to act like little girls.  Women and small children were least likely to be stopped from escaping the country was the justification he gave.  This detail I have always found fascinating, within racism-religionism there existed genderism and ageism.  Once prejudices and discrimination are accepted within a social environment, multiple facets of “-isms” can occur at once (Sue, 2010).  Women and children were viewed as weak and not a threat, therefore had a chance of being looked over.

He recalled having to learn English when arriving to the states, completely abandoning Dutch language in his daily life.  My father has told me the only Dutch he had ever learned from him in the past was curse words…because they were the only ones that would slip out essentially.  Several years ago, my father took my grandfather on a trip to tour Europe, especially Belgium.  I wish I could have been there to experience the next moment I am about to tell you because it was a profound moment to hear about.  They arrived in Europe by plane and toured the landscapes by train during their time there.  When the train pulled up in Belgium, my grandfather got off and began to cry.  And then, he proceeded to speak Dutch to every person that he encountered with the joy of a young boy.  My grandfather had not lost his native language…he had oppressed it for over sixty years of his life.  

This trip changed the equity in my grandfather’s life and his social identity.  Derman-Sparks & Edwards (2010) states that social identities evolve with a person and their experiences, reassessing and changing continuously.  He returned reconnected with his heritage, birthplace, and native language.  Since then, he now subscribes to Belgium papers and magazines to keep up with the Dutch language and news happenings.  He gladly translates and teaches us how to pronounce words appropriately, which never happened before.  My grandfather will be 93 in October and it seems he is finally at peace with who he is and where he has come from.  

It is difficult for me to understand how my grandfather felt all those years, fearfully internalizing that not speaking English would be Un-American.  The trauma he experienced assimilating too quickly to a new social identity forced him to lose a main component of one’s identity: language (Laureate Education, 2011).  Nadiyah Taylor (2011) describes this loss as a hole in an individual’s identity that requires filling for the person not to feel conflicted between their family/home culture and the dominant culture present.  Long after the war, my grandfather continued to only speak English.  It took a once in a lifetime experience to repair the damaging holes in his self-identity and bring equity to his life.  I wish that it could have been different for him.  That he could have resolved his internal oppression sooner because it was possible.  Stories like my grandfathers inspire me to validate all languages in the EC settings I work in.  To bring equity to the classroom, I will encourage parents to cherish their family culture and language to foster their well-developed and happy child.  I want all children and families to feel like they belong and are visible within my practices.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Family cultures: Dynamic interactions [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. New York, NY: Wiley.