this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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But that's the thing, though - living together with other people imposes no particular hardship. It's when people behave badly that there are issues. For example, your racist person. You might consider it pretty harmless that someone likes to dance to Wagner in their home while wearing an authentic SS uniform so long as they don't show that part of themselves to others... but people aren't able to cordon themselves off like that. No matter how compartmentalized you think your personality is, it leaks out around the seams. Mr. Wehraboo there would absolutely behave differently towards black people than he would towards someone who looks like a poster child for the Aryan race, and that's a fucking problem. I see no good reason why anybody should tolerate him.
Yes and no. My grandfather was never overtly bigoted about anyone that I ever heard, but that didn't stop him from joining a bunch of splitters who went off and formed their own temple when a lesbian rabbi was brought in. He never said that was why he did it- he just said that the new group practiced the conservative Judaism (not the same as politically conservative) that he grew up with. And I never thought about what that actually meant until really recently because I was just a kid at the time.
Would I have tolerated any overt bigotry from him as an adult? Absolutely not. But I honestly do not remember a hateful word coming out of that man's mouth. Even towards my brother's best friend, who is gay. I know now that he must have had bigoted thoughts about my brother's friend, but he never showed it once and he welcome that friend into his home.
I don't want people like that to exist, but there's probably always going to be people who have a bigotry against those who are different from them and the best we can do is not tolerate their doing it in public and let them take their ball and go home when they aren't getting their way.
But again, even in your example, you're demonstrating my point that "tolerating" someone means that there's a grievance. Mainly, my original comment was just expressing my frustration that people say things like "the tolerant left", as in "tolerating" people who are gay, etc, is some kind of virtue. It just feels like people equate the concept of tolerance with not being a bigot, when in reality only bigots have to tolerate minority groups because deep down they dislike them because of their sexual orientation or skin color or whatever.
I don't disagree with you there. Tolerance is more than not being a bigot. It's also being able to accept the presence of whoever is around you regardless of who they are unless, as I said, they're breaking the social contract by being a bigot. That means you don't do things like tell a stranger who hasn't bathed in a while that they smell because that's just rude and it's also breaking the social contract.
But the important thing is that no one should tolerate bigotry. Or any other form of intolerance. That's the paradox of tolerance in my title.
Yeah - I know you get it. It's just one of my pet peeves is all, and I was feeling the need to bitch about something online. <3
I understand. Bitch away, you have good reason to.