Prejudicee

"Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," Robert Burns.

I am reading a great book, "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. It is set in the south in the U.S. in the 1960's and features the tension between the white people and the blacks who served them. Fascinating. It did not occur to me that the Afro-Americans were not usually allowed to use the same bathroom as the owners of the house; and though they raised the children, the children were also systematically prejudiced against seeing the servers as equal people. It does make Obama in the White House all the more significant. While most of us will, thankfully, probably never have to worry about being arrested or hanged for the color of our skin, our beliefs, our sexual orientation; still we all experience prejudice to some degree at points in our life.

I was once standing at a counter with my mother while she was waiting to be waited upon. When finally the clerk did turn our way, it was me he acknowledged, not my mother. It gave me an opportunity to raise his consciousness about older people and to turn his attention to her. It seems we have the same opportunity now for the persons with dementia. We can teach other people to treat those with dementia or any terminal illness with respect and kindness. We are all equally human.