Discrimination

Out to dinner with friends the other night: two are lawyers, one a Dr., two are architects, one a developer and my scientist husband and myself. One of the lawyers is the General Council for the office of discrimination and sexual harassment. Well it came up that in my profession, that of care giver to the elderly, some of my "charges" do not want black people taking care of them. And as a matter of fact the women do not want men taking care of them, only women. They don't want a man helping them in the shower. Well one of the lawyers went on a rant."That's discrimination" she proclaimed. I said yes it may very well be but if someone doesn't want a particular type of person taking care of them then what are you going to do? These people are 90 - 100+ years old. Are you going to give them a caregiver that they don't feel comfortable with just because you need to adhere to general discrimination policies? The Agency I work for employs all kinds of people. If someone wanted someone who was gay, male and had purple hair she would have someone for them. My agency is not at fault here. She employs plenty of every kind of person. It's the customers. You have to give them what they want. You can't sell a customer a hamburger when they asked for a steak. So who is to be held accountable for this? You would have to take a whole generation of elderly to court because they were prejudice. How can you do that? How can you reprogram a person who is 90 years old, frail and on the way out? They don't want to change, at this point they can't change. They would have to really want to learn a new way of doing things, which they don't. Keep in mind many of these people don't use a cell phone and can't figure out the remote for the TV. They don't want to learn anything new at this point. The retirement place where these people live won't even allow men care givers in. I don't know how they monitor the situation. Anybody can walk through the front door. I took care of a man who was 102 and gay but never came out. I knew he was gay because I just did. He was married for 59 years, had a son who was older than me. He wanted a male caregiver but my Agency couldn't supply him with one because of the rule of the facility. He had to go outside of the Agency to find one, which he did. But how terrible is that. He also didn't want any one who was fat. Sooner or later someone is going to have to give because more and more minorities will be moving in to these million dollar facilities. They are going to need care and have their own particular requirements. Now I can understand if a Republican didn't want a Democrat care giver (or visa versa), that would make sense to me. But what if someone were a vegetarian and their care giver brought in baloney sandwiches for lunch all the time.  He could then ask the Agency not to send that person back because he found their food choices offensive.  It's coming, I can feel it. So long as the Agency is non-discriminating then they are doing their work.