You see, the residents of the Intolerant States of America would have
you believe that intolerance is now a thing of the past, popular only
among the ignorant. In this limited worldview, the original sins of
the Intolerant States of America were washed away just 40 years ago by
the heroes of the civil rights era.
Great victories were won then, and they were felt the world over. But
to believe these victories have vanquished intolerance is to do the
heroes of our past a great injustice.
It might be that it is no longer acceptable to say the “n-word” in the
public sphere, but intolerance has found new ways to inject it’s poison
into society. In the quote above, Leroy Pollard does not once mention
the fact that Obama identifies as a black male. Instead, Pollard’s
intolerance is directed towards residents of the majority world (“he’s
from Africa”), towards unauthorized migrants (“bring his family over
here, illegally”), and towards Muslims (“then there’s the Muslim
thing”). Some might argue that these phrases are just
substitutes for racism, but it runs deeper than that, in my opinion.
Pollard’s words don’t just amount to racism, they amount to nativism
and religious intolerance, as well.
Intolerance did not die along with the now sanitized image of the
Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.,as the residents of the United
States of America would have you believe. It just mutated as it has
done since time immemorial. Intolerance is not relegated to the small
and backward towns of the United States of America, it is within every
one of us. Like demons, lurking in our subconscious, awaiting
resurrection, intolerance is summoned from the lesser halves of all of
our souls.
These demons win when we see them as a thing of the past. These demons
win when we see them only in the minds of others, far away from
ourselves. These demons win when we fail to see them as a confluence
of sentiments, where fear of Muslims, can turn to fear of migrants, can
turn to fear of brown people, can turn to fear of the majority world.
Daily we must religiously search our souls for these demons and work
hard to find ways to stand against them.
I don’t know what makes me more sad, the fact that Leroy Pollard
considers African people, unauthorized migrants, and Muslims as less
than worthy humans, or the fact that Barack Obama considers these
rumors so damaging to his electability, that he works constantly to
distance himself from these categories.
What I do know, is that there is always hope. Even in the darkest of
nights there is light and all we have to do is move towards it. There
is one set of Obama supporters who, rather than distance themselves,
have chosen to embrace the aspect of Barack Obama’s identity that is
inspires so much hate.
Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her
knowledge.
But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas,
Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her
boyfriend and shocking her father.“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.
Jodi Kantor – New
York Times (29 June 2008)
Nordling has never met a Muslim, but still she has adopted Obama’s
Muslim name as her own in an act of defiance against the intolerance
that has sprung up as a result of Obama’s candidacy. I am still
undecided about who I’m going to vote for, but Nordling’s act has so
inspired me that I’m going to follow her lead for at least the
remainder of the election season.
From now on, please refer to me as Kyle Hussein de Beausset.
intolerance is ignorance but like many things eroding in this dying nation the past 40 years of gains are slipping away. Backlash has been created in responding to such things as affirmative action and diversity. In addition globalization has nullified 50 years worth of worker’s rights gains.
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p>I can’t support Obama for many reasons, his most recent cave on FISA indicates he will be just as Pelosi, a manchurian candidate owned by Globo-corp.
for me when it comes to Obama. This election is shaping out to be really interesting so we’ll see how it goes. Haven’t pledge my vote to anyone yet.
FISA happens to be the tip of the iceburg. It is after all a digital world and with that comes the date mining explosion. Naturally you might make the false assumption that evil corporations would never think of using all that data they have on you against you…….
Take the comments of one whack job and draw a conclusion about the rest of the 300,000,000 people in the country. May I suggest a remedial course in Statistics, paying particular attention to the chapter on sample sizes?
It sounds to me like your the first person in the world that I’ve met whose perfect.
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p>We all have prejudices, and it’s impossible to eradicate them. There’s no way we can account for 6 billion shades of the human experience and pretend to never come to a premature judgement about either of them.
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p>That’s the point of this post.
Barry O should just change his middle name to “Notamuslim”.
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p>He gives us enough reasons to fear him. The middle name is the least of his faults.
He’s distancing himself from Muslims now, which is just making things worse in my opinion.
This seems to have been lost in current years that people can be against an idea but that does not make them intolerant. This is a little off point concerning this posting, but I personally have had a traditional stance on many issues and people generally will call me intolerant. My response typically is THEY should be more tolerant on my differing opinion.
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p>Are people don’t like conservatives intolerant? Now replace “Muslims” with conservatives, Corporate Executives, Mormons, Germans, atheists, Republicans, union supporters, Gays, survivalists, Pro-life, Pro-choice, Americans, smokers…
I, for example, am intolerant of much op-ed writing. Similarly, its very much ok to discriminate. I discriminate against certain media outlets all the time.
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p>I think when people use these terms generally (in what others call PC usage) they are referring to discrimination and intolerance born of irrelevance. That is, discrimination and intolerance based on irrelevant criteria. The color of one’s skin is (or should be) irrelevant toward applying for a loan.
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p>The moral of this is that when expressing intolerance, one had better have good reasons. And when expressing it in a blog, of course, one better have those reasons handy and be prepared to defend one’s assertions.
I don’t think you’re talking about intolerance, you’re talking about vetting your sources.
… intolerance is merely a symptom of a thought process. Having intolerance is ok. Having a bad thought process isn’t. Thus the particulars of intolerance could be symptomatic of a good thought process or a bad one. But neither case rules 100% of intolerances. People tend to assume ‘bad thought process’ as embodied in the definition of intolerance, but that’s a mistake. This frequently comes to my mind when I hear conservatives complain that ‘the left is just as intolerant’.
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p>When one sees someone expressing intolerance, one can’t automatically assume that it’s a ‘bad’ intolerance without an examination of the thought process (unless the ‘badness’ of the underlying thought process is blatantly obvious).
It’s about disagreeing without being disagreeable. I think it would do more liberals good to be tolerant of conservatives. It’s one of the chief failings of the ideology in my opinion.
to a higher standard than they hold themselves. In their minds, the are right and the other person is wrong so they can assign “intolerance” as a problem while they are simply “righteous” (“You need to be tolerant of my religious beliefs… But I think your religious beliefs are wrong and unacceptable…”)