Article October 30, 1978 Issue

A nice discernment

VIRGINIA THESIGER

Once when selling produce at a charity sale I asked a visitor if I could interest her in buying a delicious-looking chocolate cake.

"No, no," she said, waving me away. "You're too tall!"

This was admittedly carrying discrimination to eccentric lengths, but in some degree are we not all prone to foolish prejudices? They often seem to have been grafted onto us through centuries of false beliefs, and we tend to accept them unthinkingly. Not many of us believe we discriminate against, or even for, anybody; but if we stop to think, we find we have been educated to prejudge our fellowmen much of the time. We put them into categories, label them neatly as to races, nations, classes, creeds, sexes, ages, education, financial status, and so on, and then wait for them to be typical.

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