A Dangerous Form Of Tolerance

There are some things that just bug the heck out to me. For instance, I hate it when people wear dirty shoes into my bedroom. And I hate it when it takes forever to log on to one of the Science Center mainframes because every computer science course has a problem set due at the same time.

But, hey, I'm a reasonable person. I can always sweep dirt out of my bedroom, and computer science problem sets are probably more important than my daily fix of e-mail. So I tolerate the little things that annoy me.

I'm also a card-carrying multiculturalist. I tolerate religious pluralism, differences in political ideology and various ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations.

Clearly, the word "tolerance" refers to two very different ideas in different contexts. In the first sense, the things I "tolerate" are unpleasant, disagreeable, irritants.

In the second, political sense, the things we "tolerate" are vital aspects of our national character. As a pluralistic society, differences in ideology and lifestyle and unavoidable. In fact, the democratic style of government assumes that discourse between different opinions is valuable and essential to a just government.

I think there's something wrong with the way "tolerance" is used in the second sense. I hate to quibble about semantics, but it's inappropriate to use the same term to speak about both American democratic ideals and slow e-mail. The terminology that political activists have adopted belies a more fundamental problem in our attitude towards pluralism.

There are three reasons why I think the idea of political "tolerance" is flawed. First, tolerance encourages moral relativism. If differences in opinion are simply tolerated, we have to accept that all points of view--no matter how divisive, destructive, unethical or untrue--must be allowed. Originally, the belief that no individual or group of people had an absolute monopoly on truth was a true democratic virtue. But well-intentioned libertarians have transmuted this idea into a reluctance to judge any opinion wrong.

Second, tolerance breeds apathy. Normally the things we tolerate are fairly unimportant but persistent annoyances. But many of the ideas debated in national political discourse are far from trivial. A parade of skin-heads marching down Main Street is not a minor nuisance to be tolerated but a display of hate that Americans must been unacceptable.

Finally, tolerance gives right-wing extremists a degree of clout they don't deserve. If you've read most of the editorial positions produced by our campus media in the past year, you might notice that the most fervent claims of disenfranchisement and marginalization haven't come from the Radcliffe Union of Students, or from Harvard's gay, lesbian and bisexual community, or even from the various minority organizations, but from campus conservatives. Our own fixation on tolerance allows our Peninsuloid friends to demand that even their own intolerance be tolerated.

The simplistic solution, and unfortunately one of the most often suggested, is that the entire idea of freedom of expression in antiquated and should not be held to apply to certain kinds of speech. Demonstrators at one recent rally against racism in Boston demanded that a skinhead organization not be allowed to march--a flagrant violation of the constitutional right to free speech and assembly.

We face a delicate dilemma, caught between indifference and censorship. It's difficult distinction, but by no means unresolvable.

First of all, any limitation on free speech is unacceptable. The unfettered flow of opinions in political debate is crucial to the proper functioning of democracy; even the anti-Semitic historical revisionists and homophobic gay-bashers have the right to try to argue their cases. This point has probably been discussed in thousands of editorials and academic treatises and should be obvious to any conscientious member of American society; I certainly hope I don't need to belabor the argument here.

Rather than either tolerate diversity or attempt to obliterate it, we should engage it through interaction and discourse. Just as there is no reason for ethnic minorities to tolerate stereotyping and discrimination. there is no reason why conservatives must feel compelled to blindly embrace liberal ideas. Engaging diversity incorporates two ideas--the original ideal of multiculturalism, and a response to dissenting opinions.

As it was originally conceived, before it became one of the top 10 buzzwords in American politics, multiculturalism meant that society could learn from every ethnic and political group. Nowadays, Harvard students' idea of multiculturalism is racial quotas in the Faculty's hiring policy and an occasional interorganizational protest.

I'd like to see more minority representation in popular culture. There should be more homosexual literature read and studies as authentic American art, not only in gay studies but also by mainstream society. There should be more demonstrations of minority culture as not only foreign culture but as an integral part of the modern American consciousness.

Engaging diversity also allows us to answer the skinheads who want all the Asians, Blacks, Jews and Hispanics killed or shipped back to wherever they came from. I have faith in rational argumentation; if divisive opinion is constantly scrutinized and debated, racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism can be eliminated. If not--hey, who knows, maybe they have a point.

There is no quick fix. Political discourse and debate is time-consuming and often frustrating. In the meanwhile, we will still have to deal with skinheads demonstrating in our backyard. In this case, we still don't need to just tolerate them. After all, our claim to free speech is just as valid as theirs. We may not be able to shut them up, but we can certainly outnumber and out-shout them.