On Friday night, the players for the World Series crown were moving from Yankee Stadium to the ball park in Philadelphia. There was not much to listen to on the radio, and so a recording of a work by Franz Schubert was played. I have nothing against serious music but in this case, Herr Schubert’s composition went on for so long that I tried to think of other things. There were movements of all kinds, but in my own mind, I wondered whether it would ever end. Finally, we arrived at the finale and I was spared from further exposure to the works of Franz Schubert. By that time, I had the rough outlines of the following essay that I wanted to dictate.
This essay asks more questions than it answers. I do not know what causes biases or prejudices and I would like to be informed as to why they exist. But exist they do, and that causes them to pique my curiosity, which results in more questions than it answers.
I have been amazed by the continuing prejudices against women. For all of my life I have asked what in the world women did to deserve this kind of treatment. No answer is forthcoming. So I will proceed to list a few of the prejudices against females.
 
A good part of the world has adopted the Muslim faith. Muslims do not pretend to even suggest they accord equal rights to males and females. Females are relegated to second place or fourth place and they are severely punished if they step out of line. Consider that in Saudi Arabia the Wahhabi sect says that women can’t drive automobiles and cannot be seen outside the house unless they are in the company of a male family member. I am not an expert on the Muslim faith, but my recollection tells me that there are no women in the Muslim clergy. Do they believe that Allah had no mother? As to the rest of the Muslim world, women are often forced to wear chadors which cover them from head to toe so they are not a temptation to men. I do not have a scientific study on horniness, but I would assume that the average Muslim man is about as horny as the average Christian man. But that is a subject for another day.
In the Christian faith, the Anglicans and the Episcopalians are having a monstrous fit over the ordination of women bishops. Some have left the Church of England and have taken up loyalty to a bishop in Nigeria who promises to observe orthodoxy until the end. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has a real major issue on his hands between the ordination of women and the appointment of a homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. As most people know, I have no allegiance to any faith of any kind. But if I had such faith, it would seem to me that a blessing from a female or from a gay person would be as efficacious as a blessing from a heterosexual male.
The Jewish faith seems to have no trouble on this score. I understand that there are numbers of female rabbis. This of course is not good enough for the Roman Catholic folk, who will not ordain a priest of the female gender. I suppose the Pope would flinch if he were ever introduced to a gay member of his clergy.
This strikes me as silly stuff. At the end of life, if I were to receive the blessings of a female priest or a homosexual priest, I would be unaware of these proceedings. I know that there is a contention that Jesus surrounded himself with disciples, all of whom were male. On the other hand, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is given such a prominent place that in the Catholic faith they believe that in 1958 she was physically transported from this earth to heaven.
On top of that, there is much to be interested in in the relationship of Mary Magdalene to Jesus. Scholars have been studying this controversial issue. I am simply struck by the thought that in religious circles, it would seem to me that generosity and understanding of the female condition would be in ample supply. But no, the bar remains and even in the matter of religion, women seem to come in in second place. My question is: Why is this so? The ayatollahs and the popes and the imams and the ordinary preachers all had mothers. A good many of them had sisters and some of them even had daughters. How can a preacher or a pope say that his son is entitled to consideration that is still barred to his daughter? This makes no sense at all to me.
Finally, it is a source of amazement to me how some Christians can worship a Jewish deity on Sunday and resume their dislike and prejudice against Jews on Monday. This makes no sense to me but I am not the one to seek counsel from. I am just a neutral observer with no ax to grind.
 
So much for asking questions of a religious nature. Let us go on to teaching. As I was growing up, the vast majority of the teachers were female. As far as I could tell, they provided an excellent education. But until about 1942 or 1943, any female, particularly if she worked for the Clayton, Missouri public school system, who married would find that her contract was cancelled. My seventh grade teacher, Miss Dawes, could teach as well when she was single as when she was married. But once she married, she was dropped from her teaching position. I ascribe this to another form of prejudice against women.
 
Now let us to move to a consideration of prejudices against southpaws. I have no idea about how many such people exist in this world, but I can tell you that when a baseball club owner finds somebody who throws from the left-handed side of the plate at 96 miles an hour, he becomes very interested. So in baseball, left handers are highly prized. But you wouldn’t know that from driving an automobile. Automobiles are arranged so that the important controls are on the right side of the driver. We drive on the right side of the road and passing on the right is usually strictly forbidden. Until about 1950, when automatic transmissions came into wider use, it should be noted that there were three pedals on the floor. One had to do with the clutch, which permitted the driver to shift from one gear to another. But the other two, which I would argue were more important, were the brake and the accelerator. Today in our clutchless cars, only the brake and accelerator remain and they are located to the drivers right. And so we have a case of right-handedness as well as right-footedness.
Our treasured friend Frances Licht, who is left handed, also points out that scissors are right handed. Miss Chicka also says that the mouses that control computer monitors are also right handed.
Before leaving this business about right-handedness, I think it is important to note that men’s clothing is arranged for right-handers. Consider, for example, the fly on men’s trousers. I suppose the zipper could be raised and lowered by a left-handed man but he would be awkward in doing so. There is a prejudice against left-handed men because men’s clothing is arranged for easy entry from the right side. And so I ask why there should not be trousers that are made for left-handed people. I know that this is not as serious as the absence of the female gender from the ranks of the religious orders, but again, this is a question that needs an answer.
 
Finally we turn to a matter in which I have a decided interest. That has to do with the prejudice in favor of sightedness. There are dozens of examples where sightedness is accommodated but for those with less than 20/20 vision there is a shut-out. For example, when the directions on the side of a prescription bottle are written, the non-sighted person doesn’t have a clue as to whether he is taking an aspirin or a pill that would do him great harm. Unfortunately at this stage the prejudice is so heavily in favor of sightedness that those who are non-sighted have to do the best we can. There are dozens of examples, or perhaps even hundreds. Consider directions. The sighted person may be told to go two blocks in an easterly fashion and then two blocks in a southerly fashion. This means nothing to the non-sighted person.
I realize that in my lifetime or in several lifetimes such as mine, the prejudice for sightedness will continue to exist. I do not know any way around it except for parallel instructions that are spoken. But that day is a long way off. Suffice it to say that the prejudice for sightedness is going to be around perhaps for the next hundred years or so. But in doing this essay, it was a prejudice that I could not overlook. I suppose that when I could see, I was as prejudiced as the next person might be. But that is no longer the case.
 
Before wrapping up this essay on prejudices, I am reminded that in my youth in the Clayton, Missouri public school system, there existed the Palmer method of handwriting. In that system of handwriting, the slant was toward the right-handed side and it all came from doing the circles before the handwriting started and push ups and downs on paper. I never saw the value in making continuous circles lean to the right or in doing paper push-ups that also leaned to the right. But I was assured that this would make me a better citizen. As it turns out, there were left-handers who couldn’t make the circles or the push-ups and whose natural inclination was to bend the tops of the letters to the left. The handwriting teachers concluded that this was a horrid situation. For a number of years they either tried to change left-handers into right-handers, or they had the left-handers assume a position in handwriting that was thoroughly illogical. But it got the letters leaning to the right, and that was where they should be, according to the handwriting teachers. I imagine that there were a few left-handed children who emerged from these handwriting sessions with scrambled brains. I feel for them, even to this day.
 
There is also a bias or prejudice against electing Jews and non-believers to the office of President of the United States. I have no idea why a person’s religious beliefs would influence his competency in the president’s office. But as of this writing, which comes 233 years after the American government was formed, there have been no Jews or non-believers elected to the presidency. Perhaps the day will come when a Jew can succeed to the presidency of the United States. But the day when a non-believer can reach that office is further off.
One prejudice that seems to have been overcome recently is the bias against left-handers in that Clinton and Obama are both southpaws. (Those are the only two that I am sure of.) So taking a long view, things are looking up.
Well, I told you at the outset that this essay would ask a lot more questions than it would answer. I suppose that if you are a male heterosexual who does not attend church services and who is right-handed, you are in pretty good shape. Those conditions apply in my case and all I have to work on is trying to fix the prejudice against non-sightedness.
E. E. CARR
November 2, 2009
Essay 418
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Kevin’s commentary: This essay is a heck of a mixed bag. Some of these things are pretty clearly not like the others. For instance, discrimination against women impacts fully one-half of the world’s population. Discrimination against left-handers hits about 10% of people. Visually impaired people account for about 4%. My thought here is that is that if a system works for 90+% of the population, it is logical to have the country cater primarily to serving that system. Of course there should be services in place to help that system accommodate its outliers, whether that means manufacturing a tenth of scissors to operate the other way, or use the Chinese system of modifying sidewalks to aid navigation for the sightless. Whether that accommodation is being executed competently is certainly a question worth asking, but it doesn’t really compare to institutionalized discrimination against women or people of color.
That said my opinions are colored by the fact that “a male heterosexual who does not attend church services and who is right-handed” is a fitting way to describe me, so my commentary on discrimination is going to be a little bit colored by the fact that I take the majority perspective on most things, and might feel differently were I to be in the part that was not constantly catered to.