The End of Tolerance in the 21st Century

Up to a fairly short time ago America took pride in
its reputation as a “melting pot”,

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Emma Lazarus

America used to be the place of opportunity for all. The port cities [New York, Los Angeles, Miami] were smorgasbords of people, food, music and cultures from all over the world that enjoyed or at least tolerated each other in close proximity. It made us unique.

The place that everyone wanted to live, visit and be a part of. Our ideas, music, fashion, slang, businesses, electronics and democracy were in demand everywhere. We were proud to be Americans, because everyone wanted to be like us.

Interesting word tolerance, according to the dictionary it means a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality; differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry; the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.

These are the principles on which American was built.

Instead once again we are in a cycle of intolerance. It seems to happen every fifty years or so. In the 1800’s it was the native Americans who were both displaced and murdered, while newspapers of the day represented them as ignorant savages to be eliminated.

Today, their numbers are a tiny fraction of the tribal nations who were the original owners of this land. Soon after in the 1900’s Chinese laborers working on the railroads were demonized by the AFL-CIO who lobbied Congress to reauthorize the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in a pamphlet entitled "Some reasons for Chinese exclusion; Meat vs. rice-American manhood against Asiatic coolieism.

Which shall survive?" Stereotypic comments and cartoons as well as racists slurs became common as Americans feared for their jobs.

And it showed up again during World War II when thousands of Japanese Americans [and incidentally German American and Italian Americans ] were uprooted and sent to internment camps. The songs, magazine covers and cartoons that caricatured Japanese and Germans are too repugnant and racist to even quote here.

Most recently the caricatures of former slaves were regularly portrayed in advertisements [think Uncle Ben’s rice, Aunt Jemima’s pancakes] and cartoons. And there are some who equate the stereotypical images of young black men as rap artist/violent criminals as the modern day stereotypical counterpart, responsible in part for the disproportionate arrest rate for black youth.

In fact, it’s become almost typically American in the 21st century to scapegoat entire groups of people for problems and fears that overwhelm us. Whether its immigrants, rich people, poor people or just folks that look or sound different from us, it is the most persistent American ritual to point the finger at those perceived as the enemy and assign them the responsibility for our most intractable problems.

On 9/11 a small group of 19 terrorists claiming to represent a religion of over one billion people destroy the faith and confidence of thousands of lives of Americans of all faiths and tainted our view of our non-Christian neighbors.

Muslims and other people from the Middle East who wear their traditional dress [and have lived here as citizens for decades] are regularly seen as criminals based solely on fear and anger fueled stereotypical thinking. And we the children of the melting pot called America feel justified in pre-judging anyone seen as a threat along with all the presumptions, caricatures and exaggerations that accompany prejudice.

Recently an unknown moviemaker can make a bad film and posted it on YouTube and have hundreds of people on the other side of the globe react furiously to the perceived insult to their faith.  

Those we regard as leaders in our country see insults and name calling and poorly researched factoids as legitimate alternatives to reasonable discourse about the issues of the day.

And in some cases the people that used to be called the disenfranchised [the poor, senior citizen, the LGBT community, the religious of other faiths, people of color, illegal immigrants etc], have become fair game for the most despicable generalizations, ridicule and disrespect on a regular basis.

However the newest wrinkle in intolerance comes with the popularity of the Internet. Instead of the freedom of information generating unedited access to the world creating greater understanding in the world that we hoped for, it is now literally possible to accuse anyone of anything, anywhere without proof or personal accountability often with complete anonymity and have the accusation treated as though it is proven fact.

As a result of our total access society we all are walking around with more or less stereotypical caricatures of each other in our collective psyche. And unlike hundreds of years ago, again thanks to the Internet, misinformation can become global or “viral” in minutes. As Andy Warhol, predicted anyone, anywhere can be literally world-famous for 15 minutes.

The tolerance, objective attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, and ethnicity differed from one's own; freedom from bigotry that was the hallmark of America and our major export to the world, the basic respect for one another as human beings our founding fathers envisioned for a Democratic society seems far away.