Last books arrived and I've got my car pass

Those were the last things I needed before school starts.  I guess Blackboard will open on Saturday and I'll be able to get the syllabus' from all my classes so I can start reading ahead and be ready for Monday.  In the meantime I started reading "The Help" which is my last "for fun" book I'll read for awhile.  Boy, do my emotions swing from high to low on this one.  One minute I'm laughing my butt off as I feel as though I'm eavesdropping on a conversation between Aibeleen and Minny and the next I am fighting mad at Mrs. Leefolt or Hilly.  Don saw me wiping tears and he said to me, "It's just a book," but I know better.  This may be fiction but it happened to so many and I am so ashamed and sad about that.  I grew up in a place where the "N" word is still widely used and I've said it myself...let's not pretend otherwise.  I'm 51 years old, raised in the south and so ashamed of that.  I can't justify it, but I've also called some illiterate white people "rednecks", been pissed off by Asians who can't drive worth a damn, and shook my head at the kids from the Jersey shore and called them, white trash.  Bottom line is there must be something in me that thinks I am smarter or somehow better than other people.  I doubt if I'm alone.  I'm sure there are those who look at me and think "fatty" or "grandma".  Maybe we are all made this way a little.  I hope so because then I'll know I'm not alone in my prejudices.  I can say, in my defense, that I fight each day to not allow myself to think these things and feel ashamed when I do. Maybe the best we can do is to keep trying.