Tolerance

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Hartwin Gebhardt wrote seemingly a long time ago:
> [..] Criticizing or challenging another's group identity, whether by
> painting a black dung madonna or in conversation, is perfectly fine,
> provided the power relations are (more or less) between equals. Otherwise
> its an act of terrorism. 

Interesting formulation. But the catch is to establish unambiguously
when the power relation is equal and when it is not, don't you think?
Even when it is unequal, usually both sides will claim that they are
the defensive party and that the other side is terrorizing them...
Whether you call it terrorism or a challenge between equals, the
conflict and its consequences are still there and the real problem is
what you do about the conflict - "tolerate" it or "resolve" it. Either
way we could end up in places we don't want to, but the hard thing is to
figure out which one is preferable in a given situation?

> The word tolerance does not feature - it is merely
> a liberal buzzword used to legitimize the hegemony of the Western middle
> class world view.

One could say that, but as long as the inherent inequalities of power
persist, it may be vastly preferable to some of the alternative
scenarios, such as the stronger party brutally asserting its power and
terrorizing the weaker.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, just thinking out loud.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra                  mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
Dept of Computer Science           University of Minnesota
"brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio" - Horace