The Politics of "Tolerance"

Whenever Professor Dan HoSang talks, I go back to my school days--I desperately want a pad and pen so that I can take notes. He's the perfect opener for CSTI, the Center's annual "organizer training camp," because he got me thinking and left us with questions to chew on over the weekend.

One thing that sticks with me is Dan's analysis that President Obama is actually more constrained in talking about race than a white President would be. I think that's dead on. The President has been careful about every word he has said about race over the past six months, and yet the furor over his remark in the Boston racial profiling incident with Prof. Henry Louis Gates is insane. Would a white President saying the same thing have caused such a furor? Would a white President even have commented on it?

During the discussion with the audience, conversation veered from topic to topic--the need for increased access to legal services to the need for space for personal healing. Some participants shared their frustration about the lack of dialogue on issues of class. Again HoSang hit it on the head for me when he said that conversations about race and class are inextricably linked and the space for dialogue about both are critical to forging a stronger social justice movement.

Dan wrapped up with the idea of "tolerance." The challenge with tolerance is that it keeps alive the distinction between who is tolerating and who is being tolerated. HoSang is right to say that the problem with tolerance is that it can coexist with deep racial inequality and imbalances in power. "Tolerance is not the politics of justice," said HoSang this morning. But equity is--and as CSTI starts, I am sure that we are collectively working for equity for all our communities.

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Western States Center will post Professor HoSang's full remarks soon.