My wife is having a baby at the moment, well, not at this very moment, but she is in hospital at this time.
Anyway, I digress, living as I do in a very nice provincial little village, I have very little contact everyday with people of other ethnicity’s, not that I want you to think that it is on purpose, that I have managed it, it just happened.
By the by, me and my family are white, that’s pink to you, apart from the bits of me that are brown through being in the garden.
Coming to the door into the maternity unit I waited while an Asian young woman came through wearing a berka, you know the one where you can only see her eyes, very pretty eyes as it happened as well, she said thankyou and I held open the door for her friend, another Asian young lady pushing a pushchair and wearing a headscarf but no face covering, she said thankyou as well, very politely and nicely.
It got me thinking, I like to think I’m as far from a racist as anyone, in fact I try not to think about colour, just people, yet these two women gave me more courtesy than the last hundred women (and men) I have held the door open for, why?
Was it because their upbringing made them polite, did their mothers beat it into them? Or did they think they had to overcompensate for the current deal going on with Iraq/Iran/Muslims/everyone else in general who comes from around that area. Or did she just think I was a nice guy holding open the door and was saying thankyou in a polite way.
I will add at this point that certain members of my family say that I tend to think things through too much and thinking about it, they might be right.
I’ll tell you one thing though, next time I get a choice between holding open a door for a berka clad lady and a huge hooped earing’d clad young woman holding a benefit cheque, sorry ….. a sprog, under her arm, hardly understanding that I am taking up my own time, waiting for her to finish walking across the threshold of this institution we both frequent, her eyes glazed into a knowitall view of mobile phone completeness, I know which one I am going for.
And I think that’s a shame, because as I said at the start, I try not to notice colour.
