What a letter from Accra can teach Australia about prejudice and why our convictions must be accompanied by curiosity.

I wrote to Ama after many years. We had not kept in close contact. Life had carried us into different countries, marriages, responsibilities, illnesses, funerals, children, disappointments and repairs. I did not know whether the letter would find her.

I asked whether she remembered the afternoon under the tree when she told me about her father’s discomforting views on the Ewe people. At the time, I believed I was consoling her. Looking back, I realised she had taught me something: prejudice is not always a shout. Sometimes it is an inheritance spoken softly by someone we love. Sometimes it arrives as advice. Sometimes it calls itself protection.

Before posting the letter, I added one more sentence: I am still learning how not to inherit every blindness handed to me.

Months later, Ama replied. Her father had died years earlier, she wrote. In his last days he had softened in some ways and hardened in others. He had accepted a northern son-in-law reluctantly, then loved the grandchildren without admitting defeat. He remained suspicious of Ewes in general but had been fond of me, continuing to refer to me as ‘your Sixth Form friend’ until his death, one of the absurd compromises by which prejudice preserves its dignity.

Then she wrote: ‘You once told me that familiarity can disguise itself as superiority. I did not understand fully then. I am not sure I understand fully now. But I have repeated........

© Pearls and Irritations