This was a post I made on FB two years ago, On This Day. When I re-read it, I thought it was too important not to post here.

“So, I’m at work yesterday and this older Asian gentleman is talking with me about a beautiful Buddha teapot he found, and an ornate, trimmed-in-gold rice bowl. I tell him how lovely these pieces are and offer to hold them up front with me so he could continue to shop. As he is turning to walk away from the counter, an elderly co-worker passes him with an item she found for him and says loudly, “This is for that Oriental guy !Have you seen him?” I said, “There’s an Asian man in here, you mean him?” She says, “Oriental! You know… like that,” and proceeds (I kid you not) to grab the outer area of her eyes, pulling them upward and then bucky beavering her teeth at me and laughs. — Thankfully he didn’t hear her or see her.

I didn’t try to talk to her about how inappropriate she was, how it’s Asian not Oriental, or how offensive her gestures were because we were busy, but I mentioned it today to my other co-worker and some of the things he told me were just ridiculous…

He’s Hispanic and a lady who has a booth there will say to him, “I’m so tired, I worked like a spic today.”

As someone who has cared for the elderly as a nurse, I’m not sure why I’m still surprised at what comes out of their mouths, but I am.

In the nursing home/homecare settings in which I worked with seniors, I did a lot of teaching about racism and discrimination against African-Americans. All these years later, I’m working in an antique store and will apparently now have to teach about how to properly refer to Asian and Hispanic men.

In our neighborhood (a retirement community) we have a transgender woman who has had a complete reassignment surgery. She goes to the pool where my husband works and lays out. She is a she. Period. No further comments need to be made. But, of course, eighty-year old men who have nothing but time on their hands have to say something derogatory about her or make it into something political. But, once my husband shut them down and made it known he wasn’t going to tolerate the “boy talk” about her and educated them, they stopped. It’s been a much more enjoyable work environment for him and now the pool is a harassment-free zone.

Sometimes I can’t believe I spent the better part of my life caring for such ignorant people, but I will never subscribe to: “It’s just their generation.”

They are not incapable of learning. The mentality of “they’re just stuck in their ways” is laziness and excuses. They will never learn if we don’t step up and teach them. This is not to be better than someone else or act superior over another. This is to make people more aware of others and the words they choose. To help inclusivity and acceptance of everybody. And to stop the abuse of another.

I think it’s high-time we stop giving a free pass for ignorance. Education about our world and the people in it doesn’t end at sixty-two.”