Prejudice

The Mexican restaurant was deserted in the middle of the afternoon, and I sat at the bar, chatting with the waitress in Spanish, while awaiting my meal. We discussed lots of topics, and her reserve gradually evaporated as she found rapport with my intimate knowledge of her culture.

Just as my food was about to arrive, the subject of Donald Trump came up, and she let it be known, with feigned cheerfulness, that she assumed I was a supporter.

Shocked, I, asked how she could imagine such a thing. She politely explained that it was because I was white and old...without being so rude as to actually say it was because I was white and old.

"You've just been speaking to me for 20 minutes. You actually know something about me. Do I really strike you as that type of person? Do anti-immigrant racists often overflow with knowledge and appreciation for foreign cultures? Am I speaking to you (in Spanish, yet!) like I think you’re someone who floated in with a mob of rapists and murderers? Do you get the impression that I find you in any sense inferior?"

"I don't know!" she answered with an amiable shrug - her knowingly defiant half-smirk never receding. "You never know what people think!"

But she had reason! She'd had a 20 minute window into who I am and how I think! I was no blank slate to her!

And if such determinations are so fuzzy and difficult, how would that explain her snap judgement based on my age and ethnicity? If she's such a snappy Sherlock with that meager evidence, why wouldn't she be affected by substantial REAL evidence - i.e. my obvious love for the the things my skin and age told her I despised?


We still, at this late date, live in a world where snap taxonomy - first impressions and stereotypes and prejudices (all the stuff that was once associated with racism back when we still thought clearly about the subject) - reigns supreme. A world where there's literally nothing one can do to transcend preconception based on superficial, nonelective traits. If you're one of "them", I know your deal. Even if you are demonstrably the antithesis of my preconception. A generous Jew or uncorrupt Italian is just hiding their true self.