Discrimination

I was going out the stairwell door in Duke hospital the other day and stopped to hold the door for a nicely dressed white middle aged southern woman behind me. She was far enough back that I had to wait several seconds for her to catch up. I don't usually wait holding doors that long but I did this time without thinking about it. As I kept walking I wondered why I held the door for this woman when I wouldn't normally wait for someone so far back. I realized later I wouldn't wait that long to hold a door for (1) a man (2) a younger woman (3) a woman dressed in business attire (4) someone poorly dressed (5) someone ethnically Asian or Latina or (6) a woman who seemed to not be originally from the American south for another reason (since I think I associate chivalry to some extent with traditional southern culture). I may have picked out some of the various rationales for each of these distinctions in my subconscious - some seem good and useful and I want to keep them while at least one is bad and useless and so want to get rid of it - but I won't go into it now. Suffice it to say that in one seemingly innocent gesture I simultaneously discriminated based on gender, age, class, and race.