Who gets the benefit of the doubt?
Who is treated with dignity?
You would think that this shouldn’t be scarce. When the pool of respect is widened, no one is harmed.
And yet, cultural status roles have ingrained biases all around us.
We’re now seeing a long overdue evaluation of unexamined norms, which aren’t, and shouldn’t be treated as “normal.”
The most direct way forward is to default to more respect, simply because that’s what people deserve.