Prejudice

It is wonderful that you share yourself in all the ways that you do. You and your sharing make a hugely positive impact and difference for a wide variety of people. Thank you, and thanks to Opie too!

Your (and Opie’s) story is a vivid and heartbreaking example of prejudice in one of its many forms. If, true to the word’s meaning, prejudice is ‘judgment prior to experience’, then we may all find out how relentlessly prejudices pervade our daily thinking - a crude, undiscriminating firewall against potential risks to the self, in thought or action.

Which means prejudice needs to be examined, thoroughly and constantly, not only regarding its effects, but also its origin and causes, in evolution and personal experience, before it can be unmasked and defanged, individually and throughout society.

Your call for people to avoid making assumptions about persons with disabilities is apt.

But I would ask you to be tolerant of those such as the person you referred to as “airport staff”. You must not forget that many such working class folk never have contact, on a personal level, with someone who inhabits the educational and social class in our society that you do, as detailed by the many professional achievements you mention in your editorial.

Countless “staff”-type people don’t socialize with people in physicians' social or economic class, nor do they have the privilege your credentials confer to you in this culture. The only doctor they and their parents ever came in contact with was one in an emergency room or in a clinic. They aren’t “friends” with doctors and aren’t guests at doctor’s cocktail parties.

Their general separation from your world, other than being a patient or a research participant, which always involves a certain power-differential, is not to be ignored.

Let’s all recognize the many “blindspots”  we need to work on to make for a more inclusive and less judgmental society, even if we, ourselves, have unequivocally distinguished credentials.