Week 3 assignment

Examining Racial Microaggressions and Cultural Barriers in Healthcare Settings Name Institution Course Code and Title Instructor Date Description of Microaggression Incident The chosen incident is the one on the Vang Family. The incident happened when little Mee Vang, who is Hmong, went to the hospital after a chemical spill at her school. When nurse Jessica saw the marks on Mee's back, it looked to her as if it were due to abuse, so she called Child Protective Services. The marks were not from abuse; they were from an old Hmong healing tradition called "coining," where they rub coins on the skin to help with sickness. Jessica does not know of such a tradition. She made the mistake of assuming the wrong thing, that the marks meant that Mee's family abused her. The assumption was one example of microaggression because Jessica discriminated against Mee's family by making a judgment on their culture without having known it first. She stereotyped them to be abusive on the basis of her limited view instead of asking about the marks. Why It Was Microaggression, Not Just Bad Manners It was more than bad manners. It was a microaggression. A microaggression is an act in which an individual does or says something discriminating against a group that was not meant to discriminate in the first place (MacIntosh et al., 2022). Jessica discriminated against Mee's Hmong family with the assumption that their marks meant abuse without trying to understand their culture first. Jessica was somewhat hard-hearted, stereotyping the family of Mee according to her prejudice and not just asking ab...