The trouble with tolerance

In these times of globalisation, mass mobility of people and interdependence, the International Day of Tolerance is a laudable exercise in trying to diffuse the problems arising from our advancement to a more pluralist society, says freelance writer Ciaran Walsh.

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November 17, 2008, 14:14

The UN has heralded the day saying that through tolerance, ‘our long-sought goal of a global culture of harmony and peace can be achieved.’ The date put aside for this timely reminder also acts as a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But is tolerance enough? And can tolerance be sometimes counter-productive, by producing or advancing intolerance? Does tolerance merely lead to silence and indifference? In essence, is tolerance really a high enough standard to ensure a sturdy society?

The very word tolerance conjures up an image of endurance and an element of suffering. When we talk about tolerance in a medical sense it involves a degree of suffering - How much anti-biotic can one tolerate, for example? How much pain can someone stomach until it becomes too much? When it comes to people and the quest for a harmonious society, surely it is not enough to merely endure or stomach each other.

In order to answer this question take two examples of what are generally considered tolerant societies: The United States and the Netherlands. The United States is the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nation. It has championed freedom since its conception - freedom of speech and the freedom to practice religion have formed the foundations of liberty, and the statue that bears the same name has welcomed immigrants into New York harbour for over 100 years.

The Netherlands too has long being considered a tolerant country. Laws regarding drugs and prostitution are lax by European standards and immigration has transformed a country that 50 years ago was made up of mainly Protestants and Catholics into one where, in Amsterdam alone, 173 different nationalities reside.

But both countries have another commonality: the issue of immigration and integration has been at the heart of heated debate in recent years and has proved divisive in both countries. The US and the Netherlands have produced a spectrum of views that moves along the line from left to right like a metronome.

In talking to people from both sides of the divide from both countries there was a least one thing that united them all. They could all agree, for different reasons, that tolerance was not enough.

Peter Brimelow:

Peter Brimelow is a British American author, former editor of Forbes magazine and current editor of anti-immigration website Vdare.com. In 1995 he wrote the bestselling book: Alien Nation: Common Sense about America’s Immigration Disaster.

The book opens with the idea that the then immigration policy of America was ‘Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America’. He argues that the US political classes emerged from WW2 concerned to cleanse itself from all the taints of racism or xenophobia. And that, he argues, eventually led to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which in turn led to mass immigration into the States – thereby, he argues, transforming the victor of WW2: the American nation.

It’s an idea he still holds today: “People became so obsessed with the need to be tolerant they went totally overboard to the other side, they lost sight of what it takes to actually run a national community.”

It is an issue he thinks is relevant today:

“The First World has to realise that it is not necessary from an economic standpoint to have mass immigration. One of the paradoxical things that happened with the inflow of people is that it has not benefited Americans at all, it increases GDP, yes, but the bulk of that goes to immigrants themselves, and it also leads to massive redistribution of wealth within the nationally born community and that benefits the upper classes rather than lower classes. When tolerance leads to indifference, we get this problem.”

Brimelow believes that the issue is a pertinent one, so much so that he is in favour of building a walled border across southern America. His views are considered paleoconservative, and he is not alone in his thinking, but it is interesting to realise that, although Brimelow is against additional immigration, he believes that this issue only arose in the first place because of unchecked tolerance to mass immigration.

David Pakman:

David Pakman would not agree with Peter Brimelow’s views on immigration. As an immigrant himself from Argentina, he would consider his attitudes much more relaxed to what he considers the ‘average view in America.’ Had the walled border existed in his time he would not have become one of the youngest nationally syndicated political radio show hosts in America.
“We have seen the idea of walls separating peoples all over the world for a long time and rarely have they worked too well.”

However, both Pakman and Brimelow, despite being at opposite ends of the debate, can find some common ground. Both agree that tolerance alone is not enough: “Just being tolerant seems like a very low standard to me, argues Pakman. If think of being tolerant to racial minorities in my place of work, I think that I’m just allowing it, I don’t like it, but I’ll tolerate it. It seems like a very low barometer.”

Just like Brimelow, Pakman thinks that tolerance can be counter-productive, although for different reasons. He believes that sometimes outspoken tolerance can invert itself: “Any time you have a movement that reaches the media and is portrayed as radical or anarchic then sometimes it has the counter affect of people joining the other side just to be contrarian. A lot of people started favouring the Iraq war more to differentiate themselves from the people that they saw were anti-war, nothing to do with the issue itself.”

It’s strange to think that within America, we can have on one side a paleoconservative on the other a liberal and both agree that tolerance can invert itself, that it can have a darker side. Although their reasons are completely different, that central theme remains.

But it’s not just in America that we can see this.

The Netherlands:

Although immigration and integration are European wide issues, it’s fair to say that they have been debated most intensely in The Netherlands. The issue has been ever topical and as late as this Thursday made for more headlines as the Dutch minister for housing and integration, Ella Vogelaar, resigned after her fellow Labor Party leaders told her she was failing in efforts to promote integration of immigrants.

Vogelaar's predecessor was Rita Verdonk, whose hard-line approach to immigration earned her the nickname "Iron Rita" and helped transform The Netherlands from one of the world's most-welcoming nations for immigrants to one of the toughest.

Dutch journalist Yvonne Zanderop explains the background: “In the Netherlands we used to have a system where protestant and catholic were living next to each other but would hardly ever mingle. Catholic bishops even went as far as to forbid Catholics to have contact with Protestants. Tolerance was our way of dealing with the differences, it was a case of live and let live. This was the tolerance culture of the Netherlands, and it worked out well for us, we had a harmonious country even though there were differences within different groups.”

This all changed drastically with globalisation and mass immigration. The Dutch, understandably, thought this former system of ‘good fences making good neighbours’ would work again, failing to realise that although they had a peaceful country, both sides of the religious divide never fully integrated.

Yvonne continues: “About ten years ago the signs appeared that this was not working out very well. People arriving to Holland from other countries were finding it hard to integrate, they were not simply adopting our systems and customs, they had their own values and it started to become a problem. Discrimination occurred towards new immigrants. We have learned the hard way not to be quiet on the subject. We learned we had to discuss it fully.”

And discuss it they have, the debate producing characters such as Geert Wilders, a politician who is very outspoken and spreads fear about what he considers the ‘Islamisation of Europe’. Wilders has received a lot of media attention for his views. Someone who has not received any media attention is 28-year-old sociologist Fouzia, a Muslim woman living in Holland. She may not have the political clout of Wilders but her opinions are as valid:

“Regarding tolerance or tolerating the immigrants by the majority of the Dutch, I think it is a misconception. The thing we need is acceptance; the dominant culture has to accept immigrants as a valuable part of this country. I guess this 'tolerance' discourse has to do with the imperialistic past of the western countries. In my opinion, it is the feeling of being superior to the rest of the world, so we tolerate them to be amongst us, but the tolerance suggests actually that group is not part of us.”

And this is exactly the point. Mere tolerance is not enough to ensure the goals a fully pluralist society strives for. It appears to be a half-hearted goal and we can never hope to garner full understanding of each other without fully interacting with one another. It is through constructive engagement that the goal of a global culture of harmony will be achieved not by tolerance.

Professor Gustav Niebuhr, Associate Professor of Religion and the Media at New York’s Syracuse University and author of ‘Beyond Tolerance’ sums the debate up perfectly.

“Tolerance is a false promise and a shallow foundation on which to construct a durable society. I define tolerance as co-existence; you get along without harming people – allowing your neighbor to live without interaction. It’s a wonderful alternative to violence and mayhem and oppression – but it doesn’t mean you are engaging or learning from other people and that is essentially the problem.”

Tolerance is laudable, but it is a low bar of achievement.


Ciaran Walsh for RT

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