Prejudicial Awareness

I’m back on some pretty intense chemotherapy now. It tends to weaken people’s hearts, so I can only have one more round of it before I reach my lifetime limit. I also need to have an echocardiogram before I start each round to make sure my heart is doing alright. So far it’s been fine, but it’s best to be prudent. My hair is pretty much gone now too. It’s not exactly the ideal time of year to go bald and I didn’t realize just how insulating my beard was until I lost it, but it’s alright. I’m really not having too serious or debilitating of side-effects right now, and I know all too well that it could be much worse, so I won’t complain.

Now that I’m bald again, I look like a proper cancer patient. Anyone who looks at me could pretty easily make that judgement. This wasn’t the case last year, even though I had a bunch of chemo, an experimental clinical trial, and a handful of surgeries in 2017. None of it took my hair though, so you wouldn’t have judged me as a cancer patient on looks alone. And you’d have been very wrong.

That’s ok. It really didn’t do me any harm.

That’s just not the case with a lot of judgements. It’s not the case when judgements are informed by prejudice and it’s especially not the case when judgements informed by prejudice are accompanied by an imbalance of power.

Now, it’s impossible not to hold prejudices. It’s difficult to even become aware of all our prejudices, much less rid ourselves of them entirely. It’s also impossible not to make judgements based on appearances. I’m not even convinced that it would be entirely beneficial were it possible. Judgements about whether or not others appear like they could use a helping hand aren’t exactly terrible. Not all the time, at least.

That’s why we need to become more aware of our prejudices. We need to acknowledge when prejudices misinform our thinking so we can combat them and change our outlook. We need to be vigilant against ourselves, to take a step back and rethink everything when we realize we allowed prejudice to alter our view of the world or others. And we need to humbly listen when other people try to make us aware of our prejudices. Claiming reflexively to be the least-prejudiced, least-racist, or least-biased person around just reveals how little we understand these issues. Let's all stop being so offended by charges of racism, prejudice or bigotry, and start being more offended by these things themselves.