I use the following quote from Howard Glickman about the novelist Walter Mosley to introduce the civic engagement exercise in my Intercultural Communication class.
“The
novelist Walter Mosley, was wonderfully provocative as he reflected
on what he calls 'the
great equalizing effect of aging.'
Mosley,
whose mother was Jewish and whose father was black, put it this way:
'White
people become black people when they can no longer care for
themselves.' The older you get, he added, 'the more you move into the
Third World – marginalized by the rest of society.'”
Aging is the great equalizer and hopefully humanizer.