TOLERANCE: Teachable Moments?

By Ed Councill, Contributing Columnist

 

How many teachable moments will it take to learn the lesson of tolerance? August has provided several such moments to reflect on racial, economic, political and religious conflicts that epitomize intolerance between fellow Americans.

 

Current examples and those in the past are both in the news this month in one way or another and provide such moments, which are shared with the hope of affecting many others’ introspective pause to assess their view and tolerance of other Americans. Each one may test your conscience, as they did mine.

 

This month started off with the Shirley Sherrod saga. It became clear that she was misrepresented as a racist federal employee by an ideologue activist pushing a personal agenda nurtured by increasingly ugly racist displays in the political arena. The take away lessons included those for both sides of the spectrum; but all boiled down to tolerance as a political and racial lesson moment.

 

This was followed by the issue of the proposed community center and prayer area in downtown Manhattan two blocks away from the Ground Zero site. Again polarization with excuses for religious discrimination pitted against a local zoning and land use issue characterized the public reaction and conversation about this topic. It was reported as one of a series of similar Islamic facilities in communities from coast to coast that equally illustrated the lack of tolerance among Americans.

 

August 1963 was when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Had A Dream” speech in Washington’s Mall. This moment is credited with the 1964 Civil Rights Act passage. Some 47 years later at the same day and place, there are those that would deny the right of followers of the Tea Party and Glenn Beck to render a speech of a different view point of the path this nation is on currently. Again an opportunity to examine one’s politics concerning race, class, and economic leanings is presented.

 

Just five years ago on August 29, Katrina struck New Orleans. What followed was a failure of authorities at all levels of government to respond in a manner that protected the people who remained in the city, most having no choice but to do so. So not only was the immediate care for the needy, food and water for the youth and elderly, basic public health and sanitation for the refugees guided to public facilities by the authorities lacking, but also the failure of engagement by those with the mission and resources to respond in a timely manner was nearly universal. Notwithstanding the engineering failures of flood protection, this pattern of reckless neglect began to be seen as insensitive at best on a racial and class basis.

 

Katrina opened the Pandora’s Box of racial tolerance in America to a breadth and width that shocked most of us. My own family visited the area five times between September 29 (one month after Katrina hit the city) and May 26, 2006 to assist with the horrific aftermath of this disaster, both natural and manmade.

 

And last, as if to add insult to the injury of an equally despicable recovery effort in the Greater New Orleans area, August also witnessed the capping of the oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon BP facility after 5 million gallons of crude oil and untold dispersant polluting chemicals over a hundred plus day period of unplanned, unprofessional and ineffective trial and error attempts. Is intolerance limited to people; or is a corporation eligible also?