INTOLERANCE
1.
Tolerance is the characteristic virtue of the modern era, just as
intolerance has been typical of every age and almost every people in
days gone by. Tolerance, we feel is the golden key which alone can
open the door to the golden age. Tolerance is the one thing that can
possibly wipe out the evils of hatred, warfare, and confusion, the
age-old enemies of the progress of the race. When men and women learn
tolerance for each other’s race, nationality, religion, and general
attitudes, then they will be able to understand one another, and
eventually to work with one another, even to love one another. Without
that tolerance, we can never understand people of different race or
religion or nationality, because we never even stop to look at them
fairly and honestly. Certainly, without tolerance, co-operation, human
sympathy, the brotherhood of man are empty words without possibility of
realization.
But that only pushes the problem back a step. What is this tolerance,
and how can it be attained? It is easy for us to be tolerant on matters
we do not care about, but hard on matters that are deep in our hearts.
Religious tolerance is growing because religious intensity of the old
type is weakening. Religious wars, as practised in Europe three hundred
years ago, will never be repeated because Christians are no longer
certain that their fellow-Christians of different sects are going to
burn in everlasting flames. Thomas Jefferson was tolerant on religion
because he was fairly indifferent to the whole subject; his intolerance
was reserved for political opponents, and for the aristocratic party in
other lands as well. The rarest object in the whole museum of history
is the man who has profound convictions of his own, and yet is tolerant
of those who differ from him—a Roger Williams, for example, who was a
pious clergyman but allowed liberty of conscience in his settlement of
Rhode Island even to Catholics and Jews. Such a man is a symbol of
what the whole world may become in the messianic age, a type of our
strictly modern ideal.
2.
The study of intolerance takes us at once out of the field of
individual psychology into the newer and less cultivated field
of social psychology, the mind of the group. For intolerance is
characteristically an attribute of groups. Intolerance is the white
against the black; the Christian against the Jew, the Frenchman against
the German—always one group lined up against another. Intolerance
nestles in the individual mind simply because every individual of
us is a member of a nation, a religion, a race, and has the typical
prejudices of his own people. I may think myself better than you, but
that is merely egotism. If I think my family better than your family
and refuse to associate with you, that becomes intolerance. And if I
join an organization of people with similar opinions to my own, and we
decide to keep you and all your kind from doing business or holding
public office or otherwise prospering and succeeding in a country
which we both inhabit, then intolerance has attained its growth and
come to flower. Always one body of people against another, animated by
prejudice, and the reasons do not matter. For prejudice, literally,
means prejudgment, opinion before the facts come in, and the facts are
then selected to give us reasons for our attitude.
First of all, we must realize that intolerance is the typical and
natural human attitude. From the beginning of history it was so deeply
intrenched in every race and tribe that it seems to have begun with
the life of the race, and has its roots perhaps in the pre-human life,
among those wolves or bees that drive a stranger out of the pack or
hive and leave him to die alone. For that happened times without
number in the early human packs of human hives. Every group of people
knows that it is the one proper, human group, and that all others are
imitations and second-rate. The foreign language always is gibberish
to us, not because it is inferior, but simply because we do not
understand it. The uneducated man always looks on a foreigner as
somehow an imbecile, because he cannot understand a simple, natural
tongue like English! The ancient Greeks spoke of such old, magnificent
civilizations as those of Egypt and Persia as barbarians, even though
Greece was their pupil in every art from war to letters. The Mohammedan
calls others unbelievers, even though they may be fire-worshippers, or
Buddhists, or Christians; these people are not unbelievers, but merely
different-believers. And the Christian calls the Mohammedan, in turn,
infidel, which means the same thing. In the Merchant of Venice, the Jew
is referred to as a pagan, which is exactly the thing which the Jew is
not historically, for Christianity represents a combination of Jewish
and pagan elements. No matter—everyone thinks that his people are right
and other peoples wrong. “My country, right or wrong,” represents a
concession to modernism, blatant as it is. The universal feeling has
always been, up to the threshold of our own age, “My own country, or
tribe, or people, is always right.”
Intolerance, then, is not based on reasons, whether good or bad. It
grows out of the nature of groups of people. It means merely that the
other fellow is different, not at all that he is wrong. Everett Dean
Martin points out in his studies of the crowd that the crowd is always
dogmatic and egocentric. Every nation has some crowd characteristics,
is interested in its own welfare, not in that of its colonies, or
its competitors, or the human race. Patriotism is as dogmatic as
is religion. Every state, every city has its local loyalty, which
magnifies its advantages and conceals its disadvantages, and especially
cries down its rival state or city. Even the scientist, the student
of social conditions, is apt to speak of higher and lower cultures,
or higher and lower races—meaning always that his culture is higher
and the Chinese lower, or the Anglo-Saxon is higher and the Italian
lower. At that point the scientist seems to be animated by a very
unscientific intolerance. When a student of society points out ways
in which the Chinese culture is worthy of our imitation, then I will
feel that he is truly scientific and not at all prejudiced. For who
says that our occidental culture is superior to the Chinese? We say
so. Who says the Chinese is superior? The Chinese do, of course. But
they are prejudiced? Certainly, and so are we! The most that can be
said with certainty is that the two cultures are different, and these
differences can then be studied in detail.
Prejudice is often racial because people of different appearances
stand out clearly as very different from us indeed. But they need
not be inferior. The current prejudice against the Negro says that
he is lazy, unintelligent, immoral—but the same intolerance operates
against the many members of the colored race who are more diligent,
more intelligent, and quite as moral as the average white. In all
these characteristics the races overlap; the most that can be said
statistically is that the whites have the larger percentage of the
higher intellectual persons. Unfortunately, much of that may be due to
training rather than to heredity, for in the army tests the northern
negroes actually averaged higher than the southern whites. But even if
this intolerance toward the black race were justified by facts after we
whites entertained it on natural instinctive grounds, why then should
we give directly opposite reasons for our dislike of the Japanese? For
the Japanese is called by his very enemies shrewd, industrious and
saving. If the lazy negro is our inferior, then the hustling Japanese
should be our superior. The fact is that neither race is inferior in
a way that can be proved—but both are different, and every group is
naturally intolerant of the group that is different from itself.
But weighty reasons of racial character are quite unnecessary in
establishing prejudice. Probably no two peoples in Europe are more
closely related in race than the Germans and the English. A hundred
years ago or more they were closest allies against Napoleon; during
the World War, when political and economic conditions ranged them on
opposite sides, each tried to show that it was a superior race, with
no connection at all with the other, so far beneath it. Religious
prejudice may be based on genuine differences, as between Jew and
Christian, or on comparatively trivial matters as between Methodists
and Baptists. The shifting nature of these prejudices and their purely
personal application appears distinctly in the latest slogan of
intolerance—“White, Protestant, Gentile, American.” All others, not
conforming to this criterion, cannot be one hundred per centers.
This excludes the Negro, as well as the Indian, who is certainly
American but is not white. It eliminates the Jew, who is not a gentile;
and the Catholic who is not a Protestant. And it excludes a white
Protestant gentile of English or German birth, who may be everything
else but is not American-born. Obviously, there is no logic in this,
for classes are excluded for exactly opposite reasons. There is
nothing in it except the one fact which always animates every kind of
intolerance—the fact of difference.
Walter Lippman in his “Public Opinion” presents a point which no
discussion of prejudice can ignore—[55]“that the way we see things is
a combination of what is there and of what we expected to find.” He
works out the process of the “mental stereotype,” by which we have a
preconception of the labor agitator, the alien, the Harvard man, and
see the individual always in the light of the group to which we may
attribute him. [56]“One factor, the insertion between man and his
environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-environment his
behavior is a response.” [57]“The pictures inside people’s heads do not
automatically correspond with the world outside.”
[58]On some natures, stimuli from the outside, especially when
they are printed or spoken words, evoke some part of a system of
stereotypes, so that the actual sensation and the preconception
occupy consciousness at the same time. The two are blended, much as
if we looked at red through blue glasses and saw green.... If the
experience contradicts the stereotype, one of two things happens. If
the man is no longer plastic, or if some powerful interest makes it
highly inconvenient to rearrange his stereotypes, he pooh-poohs the
contradiction as an exception that proves the rule, discredits the
witness, finds a flaw somewhere, and manages to forget it. But if he
still is curious and openminded, the novelty is taken into the picture
and allowed to modify it.
Thus acquaintance of one group with another is not enough in itself
to break down prejudice, for the white man may see the Negro, or the
Christian the Jew, not as the other really is but as he thinks the
other group ought to be. Only escape from group thinking, the use of
the individual intelligence about an individual, can possibly make
any difference in our pre-conceived notions of other peoples.
Moreover it is true, as Professor Shailer of Harvard pointed out long
ago in his book, “The Neighbor,” that this fact of difference operates
most strongly when the two different groups come into contact with each
other. Prejudice is always strongest on the frontier. The Nebraskan
does not have the active prejudice against Mexico that animates the
Texan, nor against Japan that we find in California, nor against the
Negro as in the solid south. Not that Nebraska is a land favored
peculiarly by justice, but that it has no direct contact with large
numbers of these different races. Naturally, this contact often opens
the way to real acquaintance, before which intolerance grows faint and
may even vanish. American soldiers in the occupied districts of Germany
brought enough German brides to show how quickly prejudice breaks down
on personal acquaintance. Christian scholars of the time of Humanism
learned Hebrew from Jews whom their medieval predecessors would have
avoided as the plague, and a new respect for Judaism began to spread.
But as long as the contact of the two peoples is a frontier contact
only, a group contact, of class with class, directed by their different
status in the world, such contact merely ministers to the intolerance
which individual knowledge and friendship would break down.
A striking instance of this group nature of intolerance occurred within
my own observation on the Western front during the World War. In an
attack one of our prisoners was a German lad of eighteen, a harmless
peasant boy who had deserted his machine gun and come in willingly as a
prisoner; we made him useful about the first aid post, and he carried
water, swept out the place, and even wrapped up German helmets to send
to America as souvenirs. But Hans had been a machine gunner; if our
soldiers had found him at his post they might have shot him on sight.
If they had found him with other troops, they would have disarmed him,
driven him back to the prison camp. In the first case, he would have
belonged to the group of machine gunners, the greatest danger to the
American advance. In the second, he would have belonged to the group
of German soldiers, and been fair prey for enmity and capture. As
it was, he was regarded merely as Hans—and the hated German machine
gunner acted as servant to the friendly American bosses.
If these general principles of intolerance are true, we can apply
them at once to the peculiar situation of the Jew—everywhere at home,
yet everywhere the creature of prejudice; not so very different from
the other white nations among whom he lives, yet always distinct from
them and always the target of intolerance. Every movement of bigotry,
aristocracy, militarism, junkerism in every land makes anti-semitism
one of its cardinal shouting-cries, from the emigrés of Russia to the
royalist anti-Dreyfusards of France. The Jew is hated everywhere simply
because he lives everywhere, and is everywhere a little different from
other people. The Jew has a distinct religion, a peculiar tradition
and appearance which can sometimes be distinguished—he is different
from other people. And the extreme bitterness of this anti-Semitism,
more than of any other anti-party the world over, is simply because
everywhere the Jew lives on a frontier, in direct group contact with
the intolerant of other peoples. Every Jew lives on a Franco-German
frontier, or a Mexican-American one. Even in the United States of
America, with its proud tradition of tolerance written into the Federal
Constitution, there is now a movement of anti-Semitism. The most
obvious condition of its rise is the increase of the Jewish community
of America, that is, the extension of the frontier line, the contact
of more Americans with this “alien,” which means different, people.
Add to that the hatred of certain foreign groups aroused during the
war, the suspicion of certain radical groups directly after it, the
general unsettled condition of world opinion, and the vast increase of
European anti-Semitism as the parties of reaction were thrown on the
defensive—and the exact form of American anti-Semitism begins to show
itself.
But all these local details do not obscure the real nature of this
prejudice which we face in America today. It is just another form of
the intolerance of everything different which the wandering exiles
have had to face during their two thousand years of homeless
persecution. Of course, all this has had its effect on the Jew. It has
driven the Jew into intolerance in his turn. His intolerance has never
expressed itself in terms of persecution or violence, very seldom in
terms of hatred. The intolerance of the Jew became, in self-defense,
a pride in the Chosen People of God, in his ancient lineage, in his
family loyalty, in his glorious tradition. He then emphasized the fact
of difference from other peoples, just as they did, and the Jew looked
down on the rude, ignorant heathens just as the Christian despised the
uncouth alien Jew. Intolerance has one virtue—it makes for loyalty to
your own. It has many vices, beginning with false and ignorant pride,
culminating in bitter, malignant hatred.
4.
If intolerance is this natural, universal force, what then is
tolerance? How can tolerance ever hope to succeed in a world divided
into so many hostile and suspicious groups? Tolerance means the
exercise of the individual intelligence. It means that a man has dared
to look at the facts and to say: “My people is wrong. This foreigner
is just as good as I am.” Or this Jew, or Catholic, or negro, as the
case may be. It means that a man has the courage to defy the public
opinion of his own group, and to use his own brains instead of going
along with the crowd. It means that general principles of right and
wrong, applicable universally, have begun to replace the old tribal
morality, of sticking by your own through thick and thin. It represents
the growth of free inquiry, of science, of the unbiased use of the
human intellect, the broadening of the human sympathies. It represents
also the breaking down of group control, that instant and unthinking
emotional response of the crowd to that which is congenial or against
that which is different. Tolerance is the typical virtue of the modern
world because the modern world is becoming increasingly self-conscious,
intelligent and individualistic, and especially because the modern
world is beginning to afford opportunities for real acquaintance
between members of different peoples, not merely the superficial
frontier contacts which make for prejudice. Above all, tolerance marks
the growth of the larger, more inclusive group which includes the
smaller ones, and outlaws intolerance between them. In the American
army during the World War intolerance was at its lowest, simply because
all the various elements in our people were acutely conscious of their
common country. Old-time prejudices, left over from the Civil War, were
forgotten. Religious and racial intolerance were minimized because
there was a common purpose, and a common intolerance of a common enemy.
The coming of tolerance between any two groups, then, means that these
two have been included, in the minds of their own members, as parts
of a larger, more inclusive body to which they both owe loyalty.
Such a tolerance between the nations of the world, now so ready to
make war at the slightest provocation, would imply an international
or a supernational loyalty, a genuine brotherhood of man, and a real
fatherhood of God. Tolerance means that intelligence has made inroads
into the old habit of following the group custom blindly through
thick and thin. It means that sympathy has succeeded hatred, that
suspicion has given way to brotherhood and love. Tolerance is the
supreme challenge to the authority of the group to master the thinking
man. Treachery to one’s own nation or faith is no such challenge,
for that simply means that the traitor preferred another rule and
another standard to the one in which he was born. But tolerance is the
challenge; it serves notice that no absolute authority, no ancient
usage of hatred or bigotry, no instinct to fear the stranger, can
forever dominate.
There is a fine summary of this whole question in “The Group Mind” by
Professor William MacDougall of Harvard. Dr. MacDougall says of the
modern world:[59]
Instead of maintaining universal intolerance, we have made great
strides toward universal tolerance.... The religious tolerance and
liberty of the modern era are features of the general increase of
tolerance and liberty, and must be ascribed to the same causes as
this wider fact. For long ages men have felt sympathy and given
considerate and just treatment to those who have been nearest to them;
at first, to the members of their own immediate family; later to the
fellow-members of their own small society; and then, as societies
expanded into complex caste societies, to the members of their
own caste; later, as castes were broken down, to all their fellow
citizens; and later still in some degree to all men.
And he concludes the examination of the subject by saying:
The coming of religious toleration was due to the application of the
spirit of inquiry to religious systems; these inquiries produced
irreconcilable sects, whose strife prepared the way for compromise and
toleration.
5.
One more question arises naturally in our minds before we can accept
this analysis and use it as part of our daily thinking and acting; what
is the effect of such toleration on our own loyalty to our own people?
Does the philanthropist neglect his family, or the man without strong
religious hatreds prove careless of his religion, or the lover of
mankind prove a poor patriot? This is the usual opinion, and therefore
a very effective argument against the position which I have here tried
to establish. But this opinion is directly contrary to the facts of
the case. Does family affection make for or against love of country?
Naturally, the former, for loyal children are also loyal citizens.
Should the man who would love his country on that account hate his city
or his state? Of course not; love of his native land begins with the
smaller unit, which he knows best, and then grows to the entire nation,
which includes it. And in the same way loyalty to the cause of humanity
need not mean, cannot mean disloyalty to the cause of the nation,
which is so great and important a part of the human race. But, on the
other hand, the patriotic American does not hate Illinois because he
has moved to Indiana. Love of one’s own state persists without the
hatred and intolerance of the other state, just because the two are
members of the American nation, and the inclusive loyalty makes the
other loyalties less bitter and less contentious against each other.
Why, in the Balkans, states much smaller than Indiana and Illinois have
their armies always ready for a cause of complaint against the other.
That is because they have as yet no common loyalty. It is because the
free intelligence has not yet broken through the inborn suspicion
and intolerance of the human pack. Probably we can never expect all
human beings actually and actively to love one another. That seems
illusory in light of the history of human nature. But there is every
prospect that tolerance will spread as world intelligence becomes more
enlightened, and as more people in each generation share in that world
intelligence. And this spread of tolerance will make always for larger
and more ideal loyalties, including the warring nations and hating
sects of today, even as nowadays the city includes the family or the
nation includes the state. Hatred toward the Jew takes its place today
in the hierarchy of hatreds as one of the strongest and most widespread
of all. Therefore it will probably be one of the last to go as
tolerance overcomes intolerance the world over. But every step toward
the discovery of new truths or toward the dissemination of the truths
already known is another step toward the destruction of all prejudice
and toward the real liberation of the Jew. Naturally, the Jew himself
will overcome his prejudices at the same time, as he has shown himself
pathetically eager to do at several times of false security in the past.
The great hopeful fact of it all is this: tolerance begets tolerance.
That hatred causes hatred is well known, for it is the normal course
of every personal conflict or national war. Each unfriendly act of
one side is followed by one of the other, until nations enter warfare
all ready to hate one another, and leave it hating more than ever.
But friendship, fairness, tolerance, have the same way of spreading
by their own inner force. If America discriminates against Japanese
immigrants, the Japanese think of ways to show their dislike of
America. But if America gives back the Boxer indemnity to China, the
Chinese send their students to America, then these return to their
native land with an attitude of friendliness, and the process of
tolerance and peace, once begun, grows by its own power. Lines of
tolerance radiate from every true center of justice, of inquiry, of
religion. Human growth is slow, but we can mark its methods and take
part in its tremendous process.