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Tolerance
Delivered by
Dr. Bethanne Jacobson, May 21, 2006
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
Tolerance – Putting Our Principles Into Action
The path to tolerance is not always fun, but can
be, at times, comforting and liberating.
All of us have or will, at some time in our lives, be victims of
intolerance. We will be
rejected by others for a reason that is unfair; because of our size, our
age, our gender, our skin color, our language, our beliefs, our
appearance, or our abilities. We
will be hurt, some of us, many times over.
And unfortunately, one of the things we will learn from the
experience of rejection is how to reject others.
We will have learned this because we have lived it.
In our memories are seared the moments when we felt out of place,
put down, pushed aside, ignored, or ridiculed – as well as the moments
when we turned our backs on others.
We reacted with intolerance not because we were
ignorant or racist or ill, but because we were human.
The lessons we learn as a child remain with us.
Prejudice is not something people are born with.
It is something children learn from the world around them.
Each day I evaluate families where the teaching of intolerance is
often very open and intentional.
The distrust and misunderstandings that characterize our racial
tensions are just one of the symptoms of an intolerance that handicaps all
our relationships: between mother and child, husband and wife, employer
and employee, teacher and student, friends and relatives.
The “ethnic cleansing” we hear about in
Bosnia
, the recent proposed legislative action regarding immigration, apartheid
in
South Africa
, and the religious intolerance we see in our own community are but a few
examples.
As Unitarian Universalists, we try to advance
religious tolerance by upholding our UU principles and through social
justice agendas. We try to
bring about mutual understanding, appreciation, and respect for people of
all faiths. This is a workable
base for change, but I’m wondering if we should be looking less global.
For too long, we have looked to large-scale social reforms to mend the
difficulties between us, and they have not succeeded.
Before we reach out into the community and extend our boundaries,
perhaps we should be looking more inward.
We should be working on a daily basis to promote the liberal
religious tradition. But,
perhaps we should start by reaching deep within ourselves to assess our
own intolerance.
Scientific research has demonstrated that biases
thought to be absent or extinguished remain as "mental residue"
in most of us. Studies show
people can be consciously committed to egalitarianism, and deliberately
work to behave without prejudice, yet still possess hidden negative
prejudices or stereotypes. So, even though we believe we see and treat
people as equals, hidden biases may still influence our perceptions and
actions. This concept became
all too clear to me when I was taking a course in Multicultural Counseling
as a requirement for my doctoral degree.
Myself and the other students were asked to work with the fellow
students who were the most different from us.
We were asked to live in their world, share their experiences, and
then respond with honesty to our reactions and differences.
Initially everyone rejected the idea that we, as future
psychologists, could have any biases.
After all, that is what brought many of us into the field of
psychology. Throughout the semester, and through many words of anger,
misperceptions, misunderstandings, and tears of sadness, we began to
understand what the professor was trying to have us see.
It was indeed true, that the “mental residue” was there and
would likely not go away. The
residue was there, but it didn’t mean that we were intolerant.
It meant we were human. We
came to learn that it was this awareness of the mental residue that would
contribute to our success as psychologists and to our ability to stifle
the instinct to reject others. So today, I am not going to talk about the
intolerance in our society, but about the intolerance that exists within
us that ultimately leads to the intolerance within our world.
I want to look at the humanness of intolerance and
I am asking you to come along on the journey.
None of us is exempt from the habits of rejection and the instinct
to reject – our minds are hard-wired for it, and every disappointment
and heartache we experience makes us better at rejecting. It is built in
to the human relationship. As
part of the maturation process we learn how to pick socially acceptable
targets for our rejection. As
children we are less discriminate in the victims we choose, we choose
someone who has a toy we want, someone who dates a boy we would like to
date, or someone who gets chosen for a sports position we wanted.
It occurs just because at a particular moment our needs are not
getting met. But as adults we
learn to choose someone who meets our idea (based upon what we have
learned) of the social unacceptable – a racial or religious minority,
someone with a mental illness or other disability, the homeless, a gay
person, the rich, the poor, or the intelligent.
The challenge then is not only to reform our attitudes toward the
target of our intolerance, but to overcome the instinct – that automatic
reaction – of intolerance. We
need to overcome the everyday habit of rejection.
I recall growing up (as I sure many of you can)
the many covert and not so covert intolerances we observed.
And, I recognize the impact these have on my own intolerance.
But, the key is that I work to become aware of this “mental
residue” that was imparted to me by my family of origin. I may not
always be successful in eliminating it, but I strive to be aware of it.
We as a liberal fellowship, have the obligation to demonstrate
tolerance and not just talk about it.
We have an obligation to demonstrate tolerance among ourselves and
with the visitors that enter our doors.
The journey towards tolerance begins when we
recognize and try to heal the intolerance within ourselves.
It begins when we look in the mirror and tell the truth about what
we see. As I continue to work
through my message I am going to ask you to think about some issues.
When you were growing up, how did the members of your family
demonstrate tolerance toward one another?
How did they demonstrate intolerance?
Think about the categories that your family of origin placed people
in based upon their personality characteristics.
What sorts of stereotypes were used to categorize people?
Make a mental, or better yet, a written note of your response to
these questions, for this is the first look in the mirror of intolerance.
Some of your categories may include: “People that get on my
nerves”, “People I will go out of my way to avoid”, and/or
“People who intimidate me.”
These categories are most likely the basis for your own
intolerance. What do you see
when you look in the mirror? In
assessing my own learned intolerance I have clear answers to these
questions. When I see two
young Black men walking down the street, my initial instinct is one of
fear and intimidation because my family told me they were to be feared.
Under the “people that get on my nerves categories” I can place
unruly children because children were supposed to behave quietly and
politely. I’m sure you
remember the old phrase “Children are to be seen and not heard.”
Under the “people to avoid” category, my family had a long
list. I can place there almost anyone who was not white, Christian, and at
the same lower middle class economic level.
What are you answers to the questions?
How do your answers affect you on a daily basis?
How do your answers interfere with your ability to be tolerant?
Tolerance may be defined as the ability to let
people be who they are. This
sounds easy, but to the contrary, we expect the world to operate as we
want it to, people to act as we want them to act, and ourselves to become
the people we imagine we are. Our
first act of tolerance must be to admit that we fall short of our own
expectations. When we look in the mirror we are not happy with what we
see. We (I) fall short when we
(I) criticize morning services that don’t meet our (my) needs for
spiritual growth. We fall
short when we consider leaving the fellowship because someone has used
words that are contrary to our own belief system such as God, sacred,
holy, Amen, or Father. We fall
short when we are intolerant of the way others parent. We
fall short when we become angry or upset because people are moving too
slow, too fast, or doing something different, and we fall short when we
give in to the need to control and the need to have things “our way”.
The truth is that no matter how perfectly we
picture our lives, and no matter how precisely we plan our future, we are
constantly going to have to change, accept, and readjust our vision for
the future. Acknowledging that
things are not what we expected and readjusting our visions to accommodate
new ideas are an important part of being tolerant.
Being tolerant means being willing to think in new ways, to
withhold judgment instead of leaping to conclusions, to change our minds
to accept new information, to admit we’ve made a mistake, and to live
with uncertainty and ambiguity. To
do this requires an enormous amount of courage, a willingness to
acknowledge our own frailty, and a willingness to not always have things
our way. Becoming tolerant is
about healing relationships – including our relationship to ourselves.
It requires self awareness and a willingness to face the fact of
our own intolerance and have faith in our ability to change.
This is the beginning of ALL change.
My own intolerance recently became strikingly
clear as I sat through a service (Old Time Buddhist Gospel Hour) which
left me spiritually unfulfilled. Perhaps
I came to that service with my own baggage, but as I sat there I felt
myself becoming angry. To me the service felt too comical and almost
irreverent. I would like to
rationalize my feelings by indicating that this service occurred soon
after the cluster meeting and a discussion of the wish to make the UUFNB
services more “spiritual”, which included a time of serenity.
As the service continued I felt myself becoming more and more
angry. To further complicate
the atmosphere, a small child (happy and full of life) was exhibiting an
enthusiasm for life and little concern for the sacredness of the hour.
At the time I saw him as unruly (my example of people that get on
my nerves). My own
disappointment and anger along with my perception of the lack of
spirituality continued to escalate so I decided that it would be best to
leave the service and tend to the child rather than sit and remain angry.
My anger lessened as I tended to the child.
He remained quiet as we colored and wrote the alphabet.
His mother was grateful for the reprieve and the ability to attend
to the service. The perception
of most people was that I had done something wonderful.
Still, I left the fellowship that day feeling angry, guilty about
feeling that way, and unsure of what to do with the emotion.
After much soul searching, it became clear that I
needed to explore my own intolerance as I didn’t like what I saw when I
looked into the mirror. I
needed to once again examine my own biases, misconceptions and fears.
How and under what circumstances does the intolerance surface?
I’m asking each of you to do the same.
If intolerance is to be eliminated, we must start from a position
of acceptance and awareness of our own prejudice.
This is not easy. We
don’t intend our comments or actions to be discriminatory and so it is
hard to accept that others perceive them that way.
Part of accepting our intolerance is forgiving ourselves, not
blaming or feeling guilty, but saying, “Okay, I never thought of it that
way. I can change and I will
try.” We need to look at the
cause of our discomfort and what is needed to change in order to
alter/change our reactions. Perhaps,
as one of our members indicated, we need to learn to take what we can from
the service and leave the rest on the shelf.
As a therapist, I believe that change requires
more than just thinking. It’s
about taking a personal inventory, writing it down, and sharing our
thoughts with others. As I began the re-evaluation process, I offered to
do this service on Tolerance…in a sense forcing me to take that personal
inventory, forcing me to share with others some of the “not so pretty”
stuff I found. That was the
“scary part”. In order to
become content with yourself you must learn tolerance and one of the first
steps toward tolerance is becoming aware of the need to change and a
willingness to make the needed changes.
Most individuals who have participated in a twelve-step program
such as Alcoholics Anonymous are familiar with the Serenity Prayer.
The Serenity Prayer reflects a way of looking at change, and can be
considered a plea for tolerance in ourselves and with others: Grant me the
serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things
I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Changing our minds requires
a great deal of emotional and intellectual courage.
To acknowledge that our way of seeing is not the only way requires
a strong sense of personal security. It
requires awareness, and an eagerness to learn what needs to be changed.
If we’re honest, we don’t have to look far to
recognize the intolerance in our lives.
We fail to accept people as they are whenever we try manipulating
someone to think what we think, to act the way we want them to act, or
feel what we want them to feel. As
I took my inventory, I realized that I wanted the services to reflect my
needs and become my version of spirituality, without a consideration of
the needs of others or the paths others were seeking.
Wasn’t that the same type of dogma I rejected twenty years ago?
A dogma that told me how and when to practice my religion?
I joined this fellowship because I didn’t want dogma, but I was
trying to place that upon someone else.
My awareness continued to expand as I participated in the Building
Your Own Theology Workshops. Throughout
the sessions each participant had a different belief system, idea about
religion, concept of God, and reason for attending this fellowship.
Yet we all held firmly the belief of the need to be able to worship
or gather in fellowship with a freedom of choice and without a dogmatic
set of rules.
So, that must be the key!
People who are tolerant recognize there is more than one way to
look at things. Once we make
this recognition we can be curious about the world and we don’t have to
fear the unfamiliar. We come
to understand that just because something seems odd doesn’t mean it’s
wrong. It is as simple as Dr.
Seuss’s lesson from Green Eggs and Ham when he finds that he likes the
taste of a once repulsive food (green eggs and ham), he learned that being
open minded can lead to exciting things.
Tolerant people have realistic and flexible styles of thinking.
They are not disturbed by ambiguity or uncertainty.
They greet new information (i.e. green eggs and ham), new
situations, new idea, and new people with a curiosity rather than fear or
suspicion.
People who are tolerant are able to listen to
another’s point of view. In
couples therapy the biggest difficulty is having each partner listen
attentively. This listening
style is difficult because it interferes with our natural
self-centeredness. When
talking, most of our mental energies are focused on ourselves – on what
we want, what we think, and what we feel.
When someone else is talking to us we typically spend our
time thinking about how we will respond and
waiting for that opening so that we can talk.
As a result we are not hearing what the other person is saying.
And, we most likely are defensive of our concepts or ideas in our
responses. Tolerant people
expect that by listening they will learn something and give themselves the
opportunity to learn and grow by listening to others.
Tolerant people recognize that they don’t have
all of the answers. Intolerant
people believe that there is only one right way to do things and that they
are unequivocally right. For
the most part, intolerant people are always in control – THE AUTHORITY.
Gordon Allport (Nature of Prejudice) found that the link between
prejudice and a love for authority is so strong that the characteristics
of the authoritarian personality also describe people who are prejudiced.
This gives strong support to the idea that no one, not even father
or mother always knows best. Sometimes
even when we think we know, we’re wrong, and that there are some things
nobody knows.
Tolerant people have the ability to say “I
don’t know”, and they aren’t compelled to fix blame when things go
wrong. People who are tolerant
recognize that it is okay to make mistakes.
And, finally, the hardest of lessons of tolerance is: that we
aren’t always right, we can’t always have our way, that we are not
better than any other person, and that sometimes we need to act in ways we
don’t want to.
Martin Luther King Jr. offered us a vision of
community and a guide toward unity and tolerance.
I am sure many of you recall these words: “We have learned
through the grim realities of life and history that hate and violence
solve nothing. They only serve
to push us deeper and deeper into the mire.
Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a
greater toughness. It is all a
descending spiral, and the end is destruction – for everybody.
Along the way of life, someone must have enough sense and morality
to cut off the chain of hate by projecting the ethics of love into the
center of our lives… I’ve
seen too much hate on the faces of too many Klansmen…to want to hate
myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to
their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that is too great
a burden to bear. I have
decided to love.”
Dr. King’s values are implied in our principles.
Our principles are a set of ideals that we strive for in our
relationships with others. We
know that they cannot be perfectly achieved, and that we ourselves, along
with many people we encounter, will often violate them, both by mistake
and by intention. But the
ideals put forth in these principles that we share are of vital
importance. They help guide us
when we are confused and help us discover where we have been wrong.
They give us goals to aim for and offer hope that change is
possible. Connecting our
values and the UU principles with our actual experiences is at the heart
of change and self-knowledge. And,
It is only through our actions that real social change can occur.
The work begins with us. It
begins with us accepting the challenge, living our principles, and thereby
modeling what we hope is possible in building a better community.
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