Talking Tolerance, Achieving Equality and Why It’s In To Be Out

Forcing tolerance seems to be the call of the day. Which is a shame because tolerance should not even be an issue in this day and age. The word is a blight against every continent, country, race, religion, and person in this world. We all are guilty of propagating ideals that support usage of the label. We do so because we acknowledge intolerance before we do tolerance. Sounds confusing doesn’t it.

Tolerance-what does it mean

My current favorite dictionary, Webster’s New World Dictionary, says being tolerant of other people’s views, belief, practices, etc. The root word, tolerate means to allow or respect. In essence isn’t that what we all want to be allowed to do our own thing and be respected. With that in mind there should not be any problems, should there? Yet, there is. Why is that? Simply it boils down to we all want to be right all the time. Think about it and you know it is true. No one likes to be wrong. The worst is when there is no clear proof of right or wrong. This means we have to decide for ourselves. When we have to decide for ourselves there usually becomes a problem honoring the meaning of the word tolerance. Why? Most people can’t tolerant being wrong when there is no definitive proof to say they are not right. As a matter of fact, many have a problem when there is proof. What does tolerance mean, having respect. If you want respect, you have to give respect.

Achieving equality

Chris Rock, the comedian, has a unique view on achieving equality. For the first time two black head coaches led teams to the Super Bowl. The issue of whether or not the National Football League is close to achieving equality in the coaching ranks is a top story. Rock indicated when anyone can say they don’t like a black coach without being called a racist, then we have equality. The man makes a very deep observation on the matter of equality and racism. In order to have equality, we have to stop drawing lines in the sand. To achieve equality there can be no boundaries. There can be no closets. There can be no special considerations due to race, color, religion, gender or sexual preference. We cannot achieve this equality now because we still make those references that acknowledge boundaries.

Are we closer? I do not know that we are, if an event like the Super Bowl significance cannot be in a sports contest between the NFL’s best two teams. In the end, each and every participant is a person. In addition, the equality references are not just limited to football and color.