Vanessa Austin Locke: Plaque and prejudice
This column follows hard on the heels of my last column about how prejudice-free Brighton is and how I, having been brought up there, have been surprised to find it rife in our country. Then, last week, the very day after I penned that article, I was proved wrong when I found prejudice lurking frighteningly close to home… in myself.
It all started because I have excellent teeth. I’ve been a very good girl about taking care of them, I brush twice a day and have never missed a dental appointment. After spending my entire life with the same dentist however, I had to register with a new one in my area. That morning I brushed, rinsed and flossed and then went to sit like the good little thing I am in the surgery. The receptionist sent me up and a pretty young woman in a pink dental smock opened the door and greeted me in what I took to be an Eastern European accent. Sat behind her was a young black man in a white dental smock. I smiled at the girl and then immediately turned my attention to the young dentist with an air of expectation. He smiled at me but said nothing. Then the young woman who I’d turned my back on said, “I’m your dentist and this is my dental assistant.” There was the briefest pause while I rearranged my assumptions to fit reality and then I said, “lovely to meet you both.” And the appointment commenced (my teeth were still excellent by the way).
“I had just uncovered prejudice when I had been arrogant enough to consider myself prejudice free”
But as I lay there looking up at the ceiling under the dental interrogation lamp I was trying to work out what had just happened. I had just uncovered prejudice when I had been arrogant enough to consider myself prejudice free. My prejudice wasn’t a traditional one of colour, religion or sexuality (unless it’s against her pink smock), it was a thoroughly modern and well concealed one because of its host; it was a prejudice towards women and towards Eastern Europe, from where just two generations ago, the female line of my own family originated – I was prejudice towards myself.
But it got worse. I lay there thinking how great it was that this young woman had managed to become a dentist in the UK. Having absolutely no knowledge of her background or education I pictured a life of relative poverty, a struggle to come to the UK, working nights to pass her exams, managing to overcome the difficulties of being a woman in the workplace as well as being a foreign national. I had absolutely no information to indicate that this woman was anything other than a privileged middle-class brat like myself, and yet assumption continued to make an ass of me.
I’m still not really sure where this collection of prejudices came from, and so I begin to unpack the latest imperfection of my character and attempt to discover where it was formed, nurtured and raised so that I might find a way to dispel it. It’s certainly re-affirmed my belief that, as women in the workplace, we still have a long road ahead of us if we can’t quite believe that we’re there ourselves. And it’s made me wonder about who we’ll discriminate against next, maybe without even realising we’re doing it. So if there’s a message to be had here, other than reprehension, it’s to monitor ourselves, and never think that we’ve made it, because we can always do better.
Follow me: @vnessenvy
