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Some people hurt others and mean to; some hurt others without meaning to. Some denigrate others and couldn’t care less; some, on discovering a bias deep inside themselves, feel immediate and agonizing remorse.
These contrasts came to mind as I read a passage in Donna Leon’s 2021 novel, Transient Desires, in her Venice-set Commissario Guido Brunetti series. Shortened for this essay, here’s a conversation Brunetti has with his police colleague, Commissario Claudia Griffoni, right after they’ve interviewed an officer in a different law enforcement arm. The officer was from Naples, as was Griffoni before she moved to Venice. The turning point in the interview occurred when Griffoni shifted to her Neapolitan dialect to draw him out. (“Terrona” is derogatory northern Italian for Southern Italian women. “Veneziano” is Venice’s local dialect):
“May I say a few words about Veneziano?” she [Griffoni] surprised him [Brunetti] by asking. … “I’ve become accustomed to it. When you … and the others speak it, I listen to what you say and understand a lot of it. Not all, but most.”
“I’m happy to learn that,” Brunetti said, utterly confused as to why they were having this conversation …
“But don’t…” she began, turning to face him. “I don’t hear it and immediately assume that you all have to be stevedores or bargemen, barely literate and that reluctantly so.”
“I’m happy to learn that, too,” Brunetti said, even more confused…
“But,” Griffoni went on… “the instant I start to speak with a Neapolitan accent…” She paused here and took a breath – “you might have fainted at the sound.” A depth charge exploded in Brunetti’s conscience, and he felt his face redden. “At the mere sound of my accent, you began to assume that everything I’ve done in the last years is open to question, and at heart I might remain the ignorant terrona that many of our colleagues still suspect me of being.”
It was by force of will that Brunetti kept her gaze and allowed her to see the flush of shame he could not control and could not stop. For a horrible moment, Brunetti feared that he would begin to cry.
He opened his mouth to speak but could find no words. He was her closest colleague… and yet she still saw this in him. The shame of it was that she was right. Was this what Blacks and Jews and gays lived with – the possibility that the crack would open in the ice beneath their feet at any step, sucking down all hope of friendship, all hope of love, all hope of common humanity?
He put his palms to his eyes and rubbed at them until he could look at her again.
“I apologize, Claudia,” he said, his voice hoarse and uncontrollable. “From the deepest place in me. Please forgive me.”
“We’re friends, Guido. And there’s more than enough good in you to make up for this.” She reached over and touched the side of his face. “It’s gone, Guido. Gone.”
It takes them a little time and a few distractions, but eventually it does seem “gone,” if surely never forgotten.
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I’ve had my own prejudices over the course of my life, and may well still have some. I’ve written about my former anti-Irish prejudice. I was fully aware of it, unlike Brunetti’s unconscious bias against Neapolitans, but once I realized how wrong and misguided it was, I was mortified. Also, like Brunetti, there are regional accents that bother me, despite my resistance. There’s one in Birmingham, England, a country whose many varied accents I mostly love. Then there are what I consider affectations. It was in college that I first heard the word “America” spoken by a classmate as if the ending “a” were “ah.” So pretentiously patriotic, I thought then, and still do.
It’s silly to pretend that human beings who all dislike certain sounds, certain colors, certain outdoor temperatures, certain songs, certain movies, certain coffees, certain whiskeys, don’t also discriminate when it comes to accents, along with all the other human traits. We discriminate all the time, often for good but sometimes for very bad. Worst of all, the often silly prejudices we harbor can influence how we perceive the people we encounter. Prejudice is inescapable. What matters is how we manage it.
Prejudices around disability are the kind that even the nicest people can fail to see in themselves. Many remain misinformed about people with disabilities and make damaging assumptions. Some even harbor hostility without being conscious of it.
Even among disabled people, prejudices abound. In my own case, I took OCD lightly until I read Amherst College undergrad Willow Darp’s piece in the college’s Student newspaper about her own OCD. Thanks to her and another friend’s stories, I’ve come around to understanding what is involved in living with and managing it. I’ve known people with chronic pain show impatience with those who endure ADHD. “Disability” is a huge umbrella, with each condition calling for its own understanding.
My last detailed post about my alma mater was “Sunlight at Amherst” (2023), which, sadly, proved too optimistic. Ever since my undergraduate days, I’ve found nearly every member of Amherst’s staff, administration, faculty and student body to be both intelligent and kind. Yet, resorting to student privacy as a legal crutch for the College’s benefit, Amherst remains obdurate in its refusal to open up about its acceptance record of blind and other physically disabled students. In 2023, when I made exhaustive inquiries outside official channels, students told me that one undergrad that year used a wheelchair and one relied on a cane for support when walking. There were, I was told, no other students with obvious physical disabilities. When I told administration that the disabled students I spoke to that year feared to speak openly, they dismissed my concern. True, when I bring a problem to their attention, such as the inaccessibility of a critical website function to visually impaired visitors, they fix it, but website problems persist, as is the case with other obstacles. When I asked for the qualifications of the college’s accessibility services director, which appear nowhere on the Amherst website and cannot be found via Gemini, administration went silent.
In late 2025, I wrote to the accessibility services director to propose we talk. I followed up with a phone call and left a message with an assistant. I got an email asserting that all was well and no response to my suggestion that we talk. In conversation, bad impressions we’d each made could have been corrected, misunderstandings resolved. We might even have had a Griffoni -Brunetti moment.
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Donna Leon depicts that moment between Griffoni and Brunetti as a series of steps leading them to their even deeper friendship:
1. To her sorrow, Griffoni discovers Brunetti’s prejudice against her native dialect.
2. She takes the brave step of alerting him to it.
3. Brunetti shifts from incomprehension to sudden understanding.
4. He fights his impulse to deny it, but, literally, does not turn away.
5. With unfeigned sincerity, he apologizes.
6. Griffoni graciously acknowledges his realization and accepts his apology.
7. Despite her own turmoil, she touches the side of his face and assures him nothing has changed.
Except something has changed. For the better.
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