I just read a little on the subject of tolerance and was immediately reminded of the recent way for identifying new trends by calling the new something a “new” version of the old trend. For example, “red is the new mauve” if red is now the chic color and it used to be mauve. It starts sounding really dumb when it’s something like “black, the new white.” If black is the new white, then where are the contrasts?
But what I read said more clearly what I had been thinking for some time. Tolerance is now seen as a form of bigotry because it presumes that your underlying values are contrary to those that you are willing to tolerate. In other words, if you can’t simply agree with them, then you are a bigot even if you can live with them.
