Thanks – see you more often!
Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories
.-= Hilary´s last blog ..A bet on the Eleven Cities Tour or the Winter Olympics being held? =-.

I believe until we can look at someone who is different than we are or believes differently than we do and see what is similar between us, we are destined to choose prejudice. It’s like Tess and Belinda said in their posts….we are more alike than different. Recognizing this is a choice we have to learn to make:~)

I’m not going to tell you that people will not judge you by your appearance. It happens and it’s happened to me. I often feel ugly and very nervous when meeting new people. While some of the reactions may be prejudice, I believe a lot of it IS my hypersensitivity, which makes people uncomfortable.

Let me give you an different example. I knew a man who wasn’t attractive and in addition had scars on his face from some accident. Yet, he was extremely popular. I watched him to see how he did this.

It seems his secret was he ignored the discomfort that people showed him at first meeting. Instead, he totally focused on the other person by asking questions about their lives, jobs, and children, etc. Eventually, the people he was talking to forgot all about the scars on his face because they were too busy talking about themselves to notice anymore:~) Now, I can’t say I can do this, but it is a good reminder for me when I feeling unattractive and sensitive about it. Take this for what its worth:~)

I don’t know if it was prejudice or what, but I was made fun of a lot as a child because I was adopted. The adult experience (some 30 yrs ago) involved being shunned, avoided and ostracized by “friends” who were well-meaning Christians considering me a pagan witch because I read books outside their “niche” , shall we say. There was really nothing I could do about it because their fervor was so intensely against me. Suddenly I’m being judged and condemned, not on what kind of person I am, but the books I read? Whatever.

How do you use your freedom of choice in dealing with prejudice? By dealing with my own prejudice first and foremost. I suspect that I’m no better or worse than anyone else when it comes to this thorny issue, so I always need to be on the lookout so that my prejudice doesn’t spill over onto others around me.

How do you recognize your own prejudices? Whenever I think in terms of “us” versus “them”, then I know I’m being prejudiced. A good way to then deal with it is then trying to get to know that person or thing that I’m being inwardly prejudiced about. There’s nothing like a little familiarity with those you would previously have scorned to get your heart opening up a little more!

Have you ever been in a situation where someone was prejudiced against you? If so how did you handle it?
I suspect that I have been in too many to name, but nothing that I can prove beyond, “It made me feel horrible.” People are often not so overt about their prejudice any more. They usually convey it (knowingly and unknowingly) through what they say and body language. For example, when I’m with my wife or a couple of friends and we meet somebody for the first time, 9 times out of 10 this new person will look at anyone BUT me. Now, this may simply be hypersensitivity about my looks on my part, and they may simply be trying to be polite by not staring, but it happens far too often for me to be comfortable with it. As for how I handle it, inwardly I don’t, but outwardly I am warm and polite, and make an effort so that they’ll feel welcome. This, however, is why I tend to find most social situations awkward.
.-= Tony Single´s last blog ..Fearful Asymmetry =-.

It’s interesting that you were not aware of prejudice growing up, but learned about it later. What I love is that once you learned about it, you made a choice about how you would deal with it. You chose to live Maya’s quote by finding how we are alike, rather than only seeing how we are different. That makes me smile:~)

Sometimes it’s good to be careful and trust your intuition. On the other hand, fear often happens, like you said, because of media coverage and what we don’t know about a race or a group of people. I think education and learning about people as individuals helps us see the “group” in a different light. I appreciate your honesty and openness, Davina:~)