Irina has written very honestly about prejudice, and what it is she "prejudices" about. There's no trackback at blogspot, so here's the link.

The IgNoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!: Choose Your Own Prejudice

I used to have this prejudice - bums. I hadn't always had it. When we first moved downtown, my brother and I met a street musician named Gary I think. He was kind of halfway between bum and cool guy, because when we talked to him, he'd show us how he could play all these cool rock songs from the radio. He asserted, for example, that Malcolm Young (AC-DC) was a terrible guitar player, and illustrated the point by showing how simple “Back in Black” was to play.

But when I began my working life, which for a while was in the restaurant business, these guys would make my life miserable. They'd steal, or beg in the restaurant, or be obscene. Not all of them mind you. There was one fellow my heart just ached for – an older gentleman who slowly over the course of my years at this job slowly transformed from being an unkempt incoherent street person into a well groomed man who wore suits. His recovery appeared to me be an act of great personal character. But my initial views were repulsion. I'm not proud of it.

My first glimmer of insight into my own prejudice was this time I was on a bus to work at 4:30 in the morning. I got off the bus, and being well over six feet, did what I so often do – whacked my head on the top of the exit. I held my head in my hands. I thought I was going to faint from this one.

A voice behind me said, “Are you alright, sir?”

I turned around, and it was one of the fellows who begged near my deli. I tried to speak, and acknowledge him, but my fear and bigotry kicked in. I turned around and began to walk towards work. He continued to shout, “Are you alright, sir?” I continued to respond to this Samaritan with silence. But I burned with shame, now. He had had compassion, and now I was refusing to acknowledge his basic humanity. I was refusing to acknowledge even his very existence. I remain ashamed of this to this day.

But it was my wife who began to draw me out of it. She worked at a post office downtown, and I used to lock up for her, because it was on my way home from work. From time to time in the winter, different homeless men would be taking shelter from the cold. I felt awful having to turn them out, and something died in me each time I did. Sometimes they'd refuse to cooperate, and I'd have to call the police and wait for them. I felt a little better about that, since the police would usually take them somewhere they could be warm. Once I came in on a fellow who was bleeding. I don't know where he injured himself - not the post office. For him, I called the ambulance.

I'd visit her on my way to work, and she would tell me about some of them. One of them, a pleasant young fellow who always had a cheery smile, had very bad epilepsy. Randy I think his name was. He could not work, but had a disability cheque because of his recognized illness. However, and I don't remember all the details, it did not nearly cover his living expenses. So he panhandled, quite cheerily, up the street from the post office. My wife knew him by name, and joked around with him. If you've ever wondered why I love my wife, whom I know I don't talk about much here, this very thing is so emblematic of everything I love about her. He was a human being. He got that treatment from her. He was no different in her eyes than any of the prosperous businessmen who came to the Post Office to conduct their affairs. She told me of how he helped all the homeless people, looked out for them, got them help when they inevitably got too cold, too sick, or into trouble.

I rarely see panhandlers today, because I don't work or live downtown anymore. And when I do see them, I still sometimes instinctively walk by them silently, particularly if I don't have money on me. But more often than not now, I will give them something, and I will talk to them, and wish them a good day.

We've all made mistakes. They've paid dearly for theirs, by being stuck in a life that can be very hard to escape. My coldness is an additional punishment they do not deserve. My own estate is fundamentally just as humble. What good I have in my life is as much dumb luck as my own accomplishments. There is one dignity that no homeless person has ever yielded up, and it can't be taken from them – membership in the human race. It is a long-in-the-teaching lesson, and I am grateful to have learned it.