Prejudice and Poverty

Image by jcarwil via Flickr

Today I had an interesting experience... I was being discriminated against because I was "poor". I took my son's car to get gas and drove it around to do some errands.  I had several people honk their horns at me, several cut me off, and several gave me less than loving looks.  For the life of me I could not figure out what was going on... and then it hit me!  I realized that I was driving an old (15 years old) , dull car that has a few dings and scrapes.  I was not in my top of the line, fairly new Cadillac that I keep relatively clean.
In keeping with this same treatment, I pulled up to the gas pump, rolled down my window and proceeded to get out my credit card when the attendant said quite bruskly "What do you want?"  I don't think that in my entire life a gas station attendant had spoken to me like that.  I usually hear "What can I get for you or what would you like or can I help you ,but WHAT DO YOU WANT??!   It was then that I realized that it was the car that was causing this lack of respect. (that and the fact that I went out with an old sweatshirt on).  Oh, did I mention that when I gave my credit card to the attendant that he looked at it front and back to make sure that it was valid.  After all, someone of my lower class could not be trusted right!  Well, needless to say, I think we make a lot of misjudgements and those rooted in prejudices are not very becoming.  I'm sorry to say, I am guilty as well. Although I still want to drive around in my lovely new car, I will be non-judgemental when I see someone driving in a beat up low end model.  Although it seems fitting that a starving college student be driving such a car, many of my son's friends have cars that arrived on their doorstep from the showroom right after their high school graduation... now that I can be judgemental about.