The new apartheid of tolerance

I have a, perhaps unnatural or irrational, aversion to the idea of tolerance. I think it might be semantic or sociolinguistic in its origin, but I remember expressing during my stay in the US last year that I hate the word tolerance. The admission came during the home-stay period of our visit to the States as youth ambassadors — shortly after the conclusion of the Democratic Party primary — in a discussion with my East Coast liberal (if she would permit me to use that term) host mother in the college town of Ames, IA.

The very idea of tolerance, to me, implies recognising the existence of diversity, but not necessarily accepting that diversity as an alternative, and much less a legitimate alternative. Now, the reason I believe my aversion is rooted in personal experience, semantics and sociolinguistics is because in Afrikaans the word for tolerance is translated to endurance. Thus, the idea of tolerance has always conjured up images of someone having to endure some burden and having to live with something externally imposed and foreign.

Sure, one definition of tolerance does, after all, hold that it is the “act or capacity of enduring”. It’s the kind of “tolerance” that says, unashamedly, “I don’t mind black / white / gay / lesbian / Muslim / Christian / Zimbabwean / Capetonian people, as long as they stay out of my way”. In other words “the other” is a necessarily evil, something that cannot be wished away, the presence of which we can (and constitutionally should) endure from a distance.

It is this kind of “tolerance” that perpetuates segregation, misconceptions, stereotypes, fears, and worse yet, paranoia. We don’t speak to one another because God forbid I do more than endure your existence. I don’t have to understand you, and you don’t have to understand me, we’re different, that’s just the way it is. It makes me wonder whether this is in any way different from the kind of separate development propagated by the architects of apartheid.

I don’t know, it is obviously a conundrum, something perhaps innately human: “soort soek soort” or birds of a feather … ? I do not, personally, think that segregation along demographic lines is at all innately human or instinctive. I think it’s socialised — instilled through language, culture, religious beliefs and other means of imparting memes. Which, at least to me, means that if they are acquired, they can be unlearned. The intricacies of this nature versus nurture debate, however, is perhaps best suited for another occasion.

At least it is less puzzling than those individuals who, when confronted with an alternative, feel the need or are arrogant enough to believe that their approval is required to validate the existence of this alternative. Commonly expressed as “while I accept that you are Jewish / Muslim / gay / a polygamist, I don’t approve of it”.

Anyway, I digress … the definition that I would like to associate with, altogether lacking in our daily interaction with one another, and apparently missing in practice, is the idea that tolerance encompasses

a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward, and toward those whose, opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, that differ from one’s own; interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, foreign to one’s own; an undogmatic viewpoint.

Ah, there it is! Interest! Not embracing, or adopting, or advocating, or enduring, but taking an interest in, or perhaps maybe a little more blasphemous to some, being concerned for “the other”. The very notion that we endeavour to learn about, understand, communicate, and even accept and appreciate, diversity.

Alas, instead we’re stuck with the bleeding heart liberal individualist isolationism of indifference and right-wing schismatic and secessionist tendencies justified at the hand of minority rights and tolerance. Tolerance is endurance, indifference and has alternatively become the new constitutionally sanctioned apartheid: separate but equal development is what they called it, right?