Personal side of bias

Through these studies I have been amazed at how I could look at my life and realize areas of discrimination when I was categorized in a few of the areas. First, there has been a time in my life when my family struggled financially. My husband, at the time, was injured and lost his job. He was not able to return to work for months. I was pregnant with our third child at the time. When he lost his job, we also lost our insurance. Being a pregnant woman with only a high school diploma, I was only able to obtain part time work. I worked two jobs but still needed to obtain social services for health insurance. I felt extreme relief when I was approved for Medicaid. That feeling was replace with embarrassment when I handed over my approval card to the receptionist at my obstetrician and her demeanor toward me changed immediately. Her smile left her face and she very rudely said that their office usually did not accept Medicaid. She made a big production out of getting approval from the office manager. Since I was so far along in my pregnancy, they approved the insurance but I was treated coldly by that receptionist from that day forward. I remember feeling like less of a person even though the only thing that had changed about me was my financial status. While I was teaching in a predominantly Hispanic school I had to work harder to convince students that I was deserving of their respect and trust. In this situation being a White woman was a disadvantage. Most of my students had internalized that white people thought the were 'better' than other races. My consistent attitude of treating every student fairly led to them thinking that I was different from white people. Students did not change their thinking about about the race, they just thought of me as 'not really white.' The insight that this study has given me is that many of the ways that people treat each other come from internalized thinking. The only way to change the norms in social identities will be to teach acceptance of all people at a young age. This is going to take generations. On the bright side, we have come very far in the last few decades pertaining to prejudice and discrimination.