Prejudice

Some days ago I had dinner with a friend and other people from academia. One of them, a young white man who spent a semester teaching in Harlem together with my friend, reported an anecdote of that time. He loves basketball and used to play in a team. In Harlem, he went to a basketball court. He was not welcome. Before he could touch the ball, a black player told him: "You should go and play football with the ladies". He stayed and played well, so the other guy had to acknowledge he was ok. He reported this story as an achievement: he had earned the trust of the black man and was proud of this.

I felt that as a woman I had lived the same situation many times. 

Some years ago I was proud of my achievement. I used to go cycling with a male group of cyclists. Once one of them made a nasty remark before we started cycling. But he had to change his mind after a few kilometers.

Very recently I only felt disgust in a similar situation. The president of the commission that had to examine the students at the end of high school chose a young male colleague as a secretary. He had to organize the materials on Google Drive and deal with computer issues. On the first day the secretary was not able to do his work so I helped him and did part of his job. The president commented: "I should have chosen you as a secretary". In my mind I replied, I'm sure you chose him because you think young men know how to use the IT tools better than women. That's your fault, not mine.

Maybe I was biased as well. Rationally I know that not all men regard women as less skilled than men. But I had smelled the stink of prejudice.