Tim Wise
They
came in the mail again, even though I never ordered them: those personal address
labels that say "teach tolerance" -sent out by the Southern Poverty
Law Center: America’s favorite civil rights group. The one run by Morris Dees:
America’s favorite crusader for, well, "tolerance." You know,
"tolerance" – America’s favorite word because it commits us to nothing
and means nothing, or at least, so little that virtually all can rally under its
banner. "Tolerance." Something to be taught, and apparently bought via
donations to a certain organization, with their big security-conscious building,
and their multi-million dollar lawsuits against Klansmen and skinheads, and
their endowment-did I mention their endowment?-now worth nearly $100 million.
That’s right: $100 million, in the bank, collecting more interest in a month
than most families will make in the next decade. Think about that the next time
they send you a mailing asking for a C-note so they can "continue their
important work;" and HURRY! Didn’t you hear? Tom Metzger has threatened to
kill Dees, and they need your donation so they can hire one of those police
officers they’ve trained to be "tolerant" to guard their physical
plant from the Michigan Militia or something. And folks wonder why I laugh
whenever I’m asked whether I actually know St. Morris of Montgomery. Yeah, I
know him. I know him as the guy who sent out a fundraising appeal in 1990
implying he was going to crusade against David Duke in Louisiana, and proceeded
to spend zero dollars and even less time actually doing it. I know him as the
head of an organization that refuses to take environmental racism cases against
corporations in their own backyard, or cases involving job discrimination, or
virtually any "poverty law" cases at all-as one might foolishly infer
from their name-because they’re so busy chasing high-profile bigots. And even
the cases they take usually amount to little but headlines: witness the Center’s
$12.5 million judgment against White Aryan Resistance, which judgment has-some
eight years later-been largely uncollected and has yet to put WAR out of
business. But then, perhaps putting them out of business would be
"intolerant," and we couldn’t have that. So what is
"tolerance" anyway? As I see it, "tolerance" means I don’t
burn your church down, or tie you to a fence and leave you to die, or drag you
down a dirt road behind my pickup. It means I tolerate your existence and little
else. I let you live and breathe for another day. But it doesn’t mean I’m
expected to fight loan discrimination against people of color by bank officers
(unless it turns out they burn crosses on their lunch hour of course); and it
doesn’t mean I’m expected to speak out against police brutality, or unequal
health care access, or the racialized spiral of incarceration, or tracking in
the schools, or unequal funding between poor student-of-color-districts, and
suburban ones serving mostly whites. And if I’m the parent of one of those white
children, it doesn’t mean I have to think about my own role in someone else’s
oppression. I just need to put an "erase the hate" bumper sticker on
my Volvo, next to the one that reads "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and
Senseless Beauty," and everything will be fine-even as my comfortable
existence comes at the direct expense of the persons of color kept in
neighborhoods and schools far from me and mine. Emphasizing
"tolerance" will focus my attention on overt hostility, perhaps, but
do nothing to address the institutional forms of racism which kill people every
day, as perniciously as any member of the Aryan Nations could. As with race, so
too with religion: "tolerance" might well preclude me from criticizing
churches for their "hate the sin, love the sinner" mantra vis-à-vis
gays and lesbians. After all, isn’t that the very essence of tolerance? Just
because these folks think and teach their children that gays and lesbians are
going to hell, doesn’t mean they’re implicated in gay-bashing! To even imply
such a thing would demonstrate one’s "intolerance" of fundamentalists;
as would, I suppose, mentioning that evangelical Christianity is intolerant by
definition, as per its desire to convert all non-Christians so as to "win
the world for Christ" -an act of spiritual genocide against other faiths or
the faithless to be sure. Yet, even to say this makes one
"intolerant," in which case, perhaps we need a little less tolerance
and a lot more truth. As a Jew, let me make clear: what I need is not tolerance,
’cause all that means is that you’ll smile and insist you love me, even as you
say my soul is in jeopardy. Well I don’t want your love: I want you to get a
grip, and I want you to check your arrogance; and no, I don’t think you have the
right to teach that to your kids-or at least, not an exclusive right-seeing as
how me and a lot of my non-Gentile and queer friends are gonna have to deal with
your kids out here in the real world someday. Likewise, people of color don’t
want tolerance, they want justice. And sometimes getting the latter requires
sacrificing the former, since, if one’s watchword is tolerance, it could become
far easier to begin tolerating in-justice. Too easy to resist raising one’s
voice against the prevailing mentality of white superiority which pervades our
culture, because, after all, one must be "understanding," and less
" judgmental," and "tolerate differences" – perhaps even
those which destroy lives. To "teach tolerance" risks inculcating the
mentality that every idea is equally worthy of attention. But the Bell Curve is
not worthwhile, and it deserves to be ridiculed, not "tolerated" as
just another contribution to the marketplace of ideas. Folks who deny the
Holocaust merit derision, not ad space in college newspapers. Those who say
slavery in the U.S. "wasn’t racist," (D’Souza), or that blacks suffer
from a "civilizational gap," (also D’Souza), or that Jim Crow laws
were meant to "protect" blacks (guess who?), deserve to be treated
with contempt, or at least criticized by genuine antiracists. And yet, on these
points there is no response from SPLC, or its Klanwatch program, which, by
definition, is too busy watching the boys in the sheets, to keep their eyes on
the boys in the suites. Tolerance often precludes anger: and anger is usually a
necessary predicate to social change. Martin Luther King Jr., despite his
commitment to love his enemies was decidedly intolerant of American apartheid.
By confronting white Southerners with their attachment to the system of racial
subordination, King was, thankfully, making clear his intolerance for many folks
"way of life," as quite a few of his targets were quick to point out.
King and his contemporaries were not attacking "intolerance," nor
pushing for "diversity" -that other buzzword of the well-intended.
They were challenging racism: a word that many don’t even like to mention
because it’s seen as divisive. "Let’s focus on what brings us together,’
they insist, ‘rather than on what divides us," which is to say, let’s not
talk about oppression, because that’s a pretty big downer. But neither a plunger
shoved up Abner Louima’s ass nor the 41 shots fired at Amadou Diallo by a bunch
of New York’s finest are about hate. Both are about power. Both are about the
implied prerogatives of whiteness within the justice system: prerogatives which
devalue by their very existence the rights and lives of black and brown people.
And the culture of racism that pervades law enforcement won’t be effected by
"tolerance training." Racial profiling doesn’t happen because cops
hate people of color, but rather, because they-like too many others-believe
danger has a black or brown face, and so "who cares if we inconvenience
these people ‘a little bit’?" After all, it’s for the greater (read, white)
good. Aida Hurtado says it best: "It doesn’t matter how good you are, if
the institutions of society provide privileges to you based on the group
oppression of others. Individuals belonging to dominant groups can be infinitely
good, because they are never required to be personally bad." None of which
is to say I wish groups like the SPL Center would cease to operate. Despite the
fact that they’ll never get-because they don’t need-my money, on balance, I
guess I’d say that I’m glad they’re around; that it’s better that they exist
than if they didn’t. But since that’s exactly how I feel about Brussels Sprouts,
it’s probably not saying too much.
Tim
Wise is a Nashville-based antiracism organizer, writer and lecturer. He can be
reached at tjwise@mindspring.com
