I am musing about tolerance. Obviously, from a liberal perspective it gets a bad name because to tolerate seems to imply that the tolerated are beneath us or at least that one is levying a subtle judgment against the other. In divisive times like these, I say tolerate away.

One group and their media apparatus are selling division and vengeance and fear: scapegoating vulnerable classes, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQA+ people, etc. The other side cannot shame a person for having such biases when the biases are being constantly and purposefully stoked. Since the messages of indoctrination are so strong and constant and effective, to ask them to relinquish these biases is out of the question. Those in the cult cling to these beliefs as a badge of honor and as insulation from the supposed onslaught of the globalists--read Jews---and as proof positive of their own special-ness.  These biases imply that you’re in a higher class, despite the fact that this is overt manipulation from the true wielders of power.

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And I think that's where the rubber meets the road. Bias has been the main currency of culture, I argue, throughout modern history. At least in American History: a certain group has been selling the middle rung the idea that the group under them was coming for their rights, their privileges, their lands and their women.  This was a scarcity mindset, to be sure.  But wealth was only scarce because the very group selling the bias was hoarding wealth and power and blaming a fledgling group for seeking the resources it needed.

England had its Peerage, India it castes. Bias was the way we categorized each other and ourselves. It was the means by which power was and perhaps still is managed and hoarded. If the hoarders of wealth, power, and status could trick one disenfranchised group into blaming another, the 2 unwitting would-be accomplices could not band together and demand a more equitable share of the resources. Divide and conquer.

Convincing the middle group of its special-ness: in America, its whiteness or it's true patriotism was enough to mislead poor southern whites that the real issues were where black people could eat or sleep or drink water. They would be distracted enough to not notice how they were significantly disenfranchised as well. As long as blacks were more disenfranchised, they were happy. Thus they would do some of the dirty work of the literal and later figurative plantation owners.

So if bias has been the currency of ruling classes, especially so in the American Experience, then tolerance is the act of recognizing one's biases and NOT acting on them. That's a big lurch forward. It's admitting and owning one's biases but perhaps not taking them and oneself so seriously. It is not multiculturalism, but a step nonetheless.

Examples of tolerance:

Not agreeing with homosexuality as a lifestyle but keeping it to yourself.

Being afraid of Sharia Law but being nice to Muslims you meet.

A white father not wanting his daughter to date a black man but letting himself be proved wrong by getting to know her date and trusting her to make her own decisions.

It’s not a lack of ignorance. It's saying my ignorance isn't in charge.  It’s a middle way. And in our current culture of racial backlash, it would be progress.

But conversely, we liberals need to not demand that everyone suddenly agree with multiculturalism. Because that only causes entrenchment. Look at the backlash from so many to our first black President! That's so much of what we've been wading through. The backlash to some people's worst fears coming true: that their whiteness didn't make them special anymore. That everyone is special. That there is no natural caste system, only the false ones we enforce.  And that the emerging narrative of America is the breaking of these false and faulty systems. That America is really for every American.

So tolerance is a bridge back to more solid ground culturally. In a free country, we need to be free to have biases, despite their toxicity and danger. Because to outlaw bias is to make it taboo, which renders it more dangerous. Trump came along and told so many Americans that these biases that they had been repressing were actually valid. He stoked these racial fears. And we then experienced the aforementioned backlash.

I think one outgrowth of racism in America is that some are satisfied with the status quo as long as they enjoy more privilege and status than the out-groups.

Let’s talk about whiteness for a moment. The term white was not used in Europe. Whiteness was an American invention: a term used to enforce a racial class system in America and to rationalize Chattle slavery. White skinned Americans were really Western Europeans from places like England, Ireland, France, and Germany. They would have identified as such when migrating from Europe. And enslaved Africans were from many countries in Africa with separate languages and cultures. Whiteness was both a means with which to create an ad-hoc racial hierarchy and a convenient rationale behind the continuation of the slave trade and Chattle slavery: the idea that African slaves were naturally inferior.

Black Americans have been proving this idea wrong ever since. Whether in the arts, entertainment, academia, sports, the military, government and in all walks of life. Seeing our first black President was such an amazing milestone. What the Obama Presidency implied and proved was that everyone is special. That there is no natural caste system, only the ones we enforce. And that the promise of America is to break these false and faulty systems. That America is really for every American.

And deeper still, America recognizes human rights, these natural rights, and encodes them in our founding documents and laws when historically they have not been honored. But we may also falsely see these rights as being only for Americans. That special-ness showing up again. In America every person is deserving of human rights. Citizens may enjoy certain privileges. But even a visitor deserves due process under the law. Because legal rights are merely the recognition of natural human rights. We don't create rights, we describe and honor them. That is the promise of America: that natural rights are universal.

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