I hear it all the time: “I’m not a racist, but…” or a “bigot, but…” or what have you. Invariably, such assertion is followed by a stream of blather that establishes without equivocation that the speaker is, in fact, a racist, a bigot, or what have you, after all.
Racist and bigotted attitudes are historically not unknown in our Canadian society, and we can readily cite cases in point: the Indian Act and the residential school system, which we’re still working through, and still trying to un-do; the WW2 internment of Japanese-Canadians; the internment of Ukranian-Canadians in the first war; the Chinese head-tax; and the list does go on.
We’ve grown-up, somewhat, through the years, and have come to a time where such notions and attitudes, rightly, are unacceptable, shameful, even. And in recent times we rarely saw such things on the main stage of our lives unless we happened to belong to or stumble into an anachronic echo-chamber in which they remained alive.
Lately, however, with the election to the south of us of a populist, narcissistic bigot as the so-called leader of the free world, such appalling ideologies have once again oozed from their dank hiding places.
Hateful, hate-filled people feeling empowered, now stride boldly, brazenly, through the streets, screaming their ugly, dangerous, hateful, nonsense.
We see them on the news these days, marching, shouting “Blood and Soil!” — straight from the Nazi playbook — or “Jews will not replace us!”, even armed to the teeth, shouting of the “filth” of “the Left”, or of non-whites in general, or muslims, or jews — demanding to “take back” their country.
We see them threatening and beating those who protest them. And even deliberately crashing cars into them, to crush dissent.
Interestingly, bigots and racists typically don’t think they’re bigots or racists. (Which should make each of us, we who proudly believe ourselves to be non-bigots or non-racists, carefully evaluate our own selves.)
While uttering racist rants they deny being racist, while expousing violence and their readiness to kill, proudly displaying their weapons, they claim to be peaceful and non-violent (just ready to defend themselves), and, while screaming words of hate they assert strenuously their devotion to love, to peace, and to their pious Christianity, perhaps (and can misquote something from Leviticus to prove that whoever, whatever, they are, has foundation in the Bible).
They seem genuinely puzzled how, we, the “filth” on the other side, we who preach tolerance, we who oppose them, can be so “intolerant” of them, and so judgemental in doing so. What hypocrites we are! What about their free-speech rights?
So, it bears clarification of what the virtue of tolerance really means.
There is a human tendency to fear and oppose what is different — not because it is necessarily bad, but simply because it is unknown. What we don’t know or understand can indeed bite us, so until we know more about it, skepticism is healthy. This makes us naturally cautious, and often fearful of difference.
But whether the thing is in fact dangerous or not, whether it’s good or bad depends on the actual qualities of the thing itself, not upon the fact of its difference. We must learn to look past the fact of mere difference.
The toleration that we consider a virtue is about not rejecting things simply because they are different. Equally critical, however, is that we must not accept things simply because they are different, either. We must in each case evaluate a thing on its own merit or lack of it, not on the basis of its mere difference.
So it is with no shred of hypocracy that we can loudly decry racist taunts, screams of hatred, and calls for the blood of innocents — because these things in their own right are vile and have no merit whatsoever to commend them. We can stand for peace, and stand-up against violence, even when violence ensues, with no shred of hypocrisy, because thugs must be opposed, they must be discredited, disarmed, and disgusted.
Our toleration of difference does not bind us to accept things that are vile simply on the basis of them being different; we are fully free and able, without any hesitation whatsoever, to decry and discredit things on their very lack of any redeeming merit, on their vileness, or their evil. And, if we value the good, we must indeed do so.
