It is downright easy to convince ourselves and others that we are not prejudiced but in the roots of our makeup is the basic survival mechanism of us or them. Them is easy when thinking about another skin, or sex, or gender, but is more insidious when we realise that how we dress, do our hair, cope with life, believe something different, respond differently in social settings. It is a difficult topic to discuss without being sanctimonious and poetry offers a tool for us to look at the issues without being pompous. The poems in this segment looked at the messages we send to our children, the sheer loss of talent we experience by not enabling the disabled, the difficulty of even trying to understand a discriminated individual’s point of view and how in many cases the prejudice is really fear. In the discussion we also address the fact that while many of us have impairments, it is the difficulty creating wealth for others that deems one disabled. ARG
Check out the Prejudice episode: SoundCloud | iTunes