King has been a prominent supporter of George W Bush and has been a regular guest at Bush’s ranch in Texas. “Every black looked at me like I had bubonic plague,” he says, although he is unrepentant, calling Bush “a revolutionary president”. I ask him to explain. “George Walker Bush had the most diverse cabinet of any president in the history of this nation: he had the Latinos, he had the blacks, all those who had been degraded, dehumanised and cast into a ... package of negative associations. He took those [people with] negative associations and he put them to the forefront of the nation.”

King believes Bush prepared the way for an Obama presidency, and compares his willingness to put African-Americans in charge of national security to a defining moment in baseball history, the 1947 decision of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey to sign the black player Jackie Robinson, thus integrating the sport.

But they were not so outraged when times were swell.

Got me. Truer words and all. Excellent post.

I think what is most clear about a lot of conservatives is what you point out in this post. Being out of their comfort zone is not something they do or wish to do. Now that the pendulum has swung toward tolerance, they go where the crowd goes. But that's a broad brush.

Hmmm. It may be early morning thinking and typing but does that make these shrill screamers of ignorant intolerance, I dunno, mavericks?

I dig your main point here - in fact, puts into words a lot of who I think I am. But I cringe a little bit at the dip into "warfare" and making armies bigger. Is it really that? I just want to live my life and enjoy the intersection of that life with the lives of others. And I want as many people as possible to enjoy that, too. That's something, but it isn't "warfare."

Amen. Many, if not most, conservative talking points during the immigration debate came from nativist and white supremacist groups or their offshoots. Conservative commentators knew or, if they had cared to, could have easily known about the provenance of these arguments. It was part of what Dave Neiwert called "mainstreaming" extremist rhetoric and positions.

Likewise. Lou Dobbs uses graphics provided by the re-branded White Citizens' Council, and they say nothing. He cites some kook and accuses Latinos of spreading leprosy and, again, nada.

The conservative movement played a cynical game and it's now time for the reckoning: the extremists have become the voice and face of the movement. que se jodan.

In what I think was his last book, "Last Watch of the Night," Paul Monette wrote, "Being politically correct is little more than not being an asshole."

An oversimplification, perhaps. But, there's also something to it.

I always thought that political correctness was a stupid label, it sounds like thought police, thought correction, politburo and correction programs. For me, it is about decency. What is described in the post (visiting neighbourhoods etc.) is already more than what I would expect. But you have to show respect. Check out what the National Council of La Raza is as you would check out what the American Enterprise Institute is before you compare them with murderers. It's a question of respect.

Another thing that always bothers me, is when some public figures claim that they are being attacked by the "PC-police" after they have offended people. It may have been inadvertently. But instead of apologizing ("I am sorry my comment offended people. It wasn't my intention. I hold on to my main point which was... But I should have chosen my words more blabla") they invoke the ghost of Coleman Silk and that Dude in D.C. and also George Orwell, Voltaire and various others who can no longer defend themselves. If you step on someone's foot you say sorry. You don't have to say that your best friend is a foot. I think it's enough to say sorry.

I feel sort of silly for even asking...

That's the ideal of political correctness. In practice it is far different. In practice political correctness is an expression of liberal cultural double standards. Most liberals do not seek to engage with conservatives in an effort to make them less intolerant, to marginalize that which motivates them toward intolerance. They seek to marginalize conservatives BECAUSE of their intolerance, period. Maybe conservatives deserve such an outcome. That's not for me to say.

When it comes to other, i.e. non-Western, cultures, however, it's a different story. Liberals do indeed strive to engage with members of those cultures. But instead of using that engagement to marginalize illiberal, intolerant cultural elements, liberals make concerted efforts to IGNORE the illiberal and intolerant, or make excuses for them. "They're minorities, so we musn't judge...", etc. It seems that to many liberals cultural imperatives trump the principles of, well, liberalism. This is particularly true when the cultural imperatives are perceived as being examples of group empowerment, even if it comes at the expense of the liberties of the individual members of that group. Doing this, of course, cheapens and undermines the liberties of everyone, not just the members of the group in question.

For the record, I think that Obama recognizes this, at least instinctively, and means to change it. It was one of the main reasons I voted for him. But there's a long way to go before PC walks the path that Obama is trying to blaze.

Steele is the Republican's version of going to a party with strange music, except in their case, they chose a tone deaf musician.

Humble doesn't get you on CNN, though.

Sad, because practicing some tolerance is exactly what would show them how far apart the two concepts actually are.

On a much smaller scale of this, I was listening to NPR (I think it was All Things Considered) the other day, and they were doing a story on how there are a lot of young people apparently taking internships for which they’re essentially becoming unpaid field hands on small, organic farms. In the long run, a lot of the farmers are finding the whole thing too much trouble because the dogmatic kids end up trying to tell the farmer why they’re doing it wrong. They told the story of a girl who tried to narc on her host farmer for giving antibiotics to a sick sheep because she didn’t understand the difference between raising an animal on antibiotics, and treating an animal with antibiotics to protect it and the herd.

The problem as you and TNC both allude is that Political Correctness is grand in the ideal, but in practice it has the habit of falling into its own brand of self-righteous intolerance. Political correctness is supposed to be about (say it loud) empathy, but since the last several weeks have revealed that most liberals and conservatives only have a general idea (mostly, one assumes, informed by the fact that it sounds so much like sympathy) of what that word means, it’s not at all surprising how regularly it has fallen far from its ideal.

Atypical for the Dish. Everyone screws up.

If there are conservatives in the world who're appalled by Tancredo, they're getting called PC by the core of the conservative movement, which is people like Tancredo and Limbaugh. The Michael Moores of the left don't actually make much policy, and J. Democratic Senator can say what he likes about Moore without having to perform obeisances in apology the way anyone involved in the conservative movement does when they criticize Limbaugh.

When you take "politically correct" out of the common left wing implications, and use it as just a neutral term, you'll find that the politic of the conservative movement has a much bigger, more thuggish, and powerful PC squad than the liberal movement.

On a personal note, I'm *proud* of my friends who realize when they cross a line and offend someone and then apologize an correct their behavior, and I'm proud to have a social circle that cares about oppression, and the dignity of people who're frequently hurt by mainstream society. I'm glad we police ourselves, even on the minutiae of day to day conversations.

THIS. Holy shit this!

I don't understand why more people don't understand the true power of tolerance, the ability to group more people of like mind together to accomplish truly massive and worthy goals. Making friends with your enemies destroys that enemy totally. Not only are they no longer a threat to you, they are now an ally, adding to the power of your group as you move forward.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the history of anti-trusts here in the U.S., the monopolies follow the exact same mold. Incorporate your competitors and get them working for you instead.

Even conservatives believe this, but they would go to their graves denying it.

Just on tolerance in general I thought this was a great piece, TNC. It made me reflect with gratitude once again on my hippie parents, who were annoying in many ways, but drilled tolerance and respect for everyone into our heads over and over.

A strong case can be made that changing your public behavior gets you about 90% of the way to what we mean by "tolerance".

I think there's something that needs to be written about tolerance as coalition-building, and the ways in which the Republicans and Democrats go about it. The Republicans were actually extremely good at building a coalition of various, very different, American voter blocks: conservative Christians and Jews, racist whites, militaristic nationalists, and the economic elite were all somehow united under the Republican banner, even though they had a lot of reasons to dislike each other. I think there's a lot to be said for the ability of an orthodox Jew, a KKK member, a rural working-class Pentecostal Christian, a Mexican-American Catholic Marine sergeant, and an old-money WASP/atheist hedge fund manager to all band together in support of a single political platform. In some ways, this is a much more impressive display of "tolerance" than the fairly rickety unity displayed by the various identity groups comprising the Democratic caucus.

But of course, I'm using "tolerance" in a very different sense than TNC. These Republican groups joined together out of political necessity, while continuing to more or less despise each other. This suggests a looser coupling among the various factions than we saw among the Democratic groups; there was less enforcement of purity norms, perhaps, and indeed one could make the case that the recent switch in these parties' fortunes may have resulted from the Republicans becoming more fixated on a set of rigid party norms that members were increasingly forced to adhere to. I submit that the term "tolerance", as used in the field of engineering (meaning the amount of play or deviation allowed between several different parts), is an apt term to use to describe the degree to which a coalition has looseness and play in its joints, allowing it to flex before it breaks, and in this sense I think the Republicans have over the last few decades displayed remarkable, if not exactly admirable, "tolerance".

Tolerance is about warfare

Affirmative action, done right, is also warfare. AA makes our nation stronger. It is knowing that talent is not restricted to those born with opportunity, not assuming that those "others" will never be good enough. It is making the effort to find the best and brightest regardless of their circumstances.

I taught math in Oakland elementary schools in the early 80s and there were African American kids there as brilliant as any future Ivy Leaguer from the burbs. They were natural leaders. The fact that many of them ended up as gang leaders rather than corporate or political leaders makes us all weaker. Affirmative Action is action to find these people and give them the opportunity to succeed, enriching us all.

It's like saying "Sure, that house next door is on fire, but over here there's an ember jumping out of the fireplace." The sheer scale doesn't seem equivalent.

Tolerance is about warfare--it makes your army bigger than the other guy's army. It gives you access to weaponry that your enemies have seemingly never heard of (like, the internet).

As for this:

As a black dude who spent virtually his entire life on the bad end of conservative electoral strategy, I'm trying not to love this.

Excellent point.

I believe in a free market economy.I am no purist. I realise that there should be some government regulation.My point is that whether someone agrees with my economic theories or not, my beliefs have nothing to do with nutcases like Tancredo.

For free market conservatives like myself who grew up respecting Jack Kemp.these are very bad times.I actually voted for a democrat for president for the first time in my life.Because despite my disagreements with some of President Obama's beliefs, I felt that Mcain would have destroyed our economy.Cutting taxes while raising spending is not very conservative, despite what George Bush may have thought.

One thing that I find interesting is that many liberals can not figure out the Republican's strategy. They ask "why do the Republicans let Tom Tancredo speak for them".

The sad fact is that there is no Republican strategy.They have lost all control of their party.It is disintergrating before their eyes.

All political parties have nut cases.The strong parties can keep their nutcases under control.The Republicans can not.

People say that Cheney and Gingrich are now the leaders. Who's following them? There are no leaders in the republican party right now as far as I am concerned.I feel that we are witnessing a once in a lifetime event.A major American political party self destructing.

Even when the Democrats were in trouble in the past, they still had some leadership.

I always enjoy your posts Mr . Coates. But I hope that you realise that the crap that Rush Limbaugh is trying to push has nothing to do with the free market philosiphy. It is just simple, old fashioned demogagory.

Race- and culture-based PC-ness can sometimes go too far - the charge of PC-ness stoking over-sensitivity is not an empty one. we gotta strive to be that melting pot here in America even as we realize that this does not need to entail total Borg-like cultural assimilation. You internalize laudable small-l liberal values, practice good citizenship, work hard and strive to understand everyone around you, cultivate those universal human values that most all of us learn from our families, and then go home and speak your language and practice your religion and decide whether to in-marry or whatever myriad other stuff is part of where you're from. It's unlikely that any of it contradicts truly good citizenship or general neighborliness.

RESPECK!

Garbage.

LOL --They aren't, they aren't.

If we think Obama should talk to Iran, I think we should be able to talk to Tim Tancredo, or whomever.

But that's just me. Excellent post, homie.

It's quite possible to be nominally liberal in an irritating, narrow, prickly way that has nothing to do with niceness or consideration and everything to do with saying "I'm better than you." That's not REALLY liberal in my mind, any more than right-wing radicalism is really conservative, but you do find these yahoos cluttering things up on the left.

I'm not talking about whether people have to tolerate the intolerant. I'm talking about people who set themselves up as the gatekeepers of what is acceptable or not, regardless of what the supposed beneficiaries of their actions might prefer. People who try to speak for others and get very mean when other people (perhaps including the ones they are trying to speak for) disagree with what they say.

My personal example is when other women come up with very strange ideas of what I, as a woman, am "supposed" to want, and then turn on me when I don't agree to let them run things and put their predetermined program into place. I don't think they are operating in good faith and trying to understand me in order to build a broader coalition. The fact that they turn on me when I talk back tells me all I need to know about that.

I must have missed the memo, I'm not outraged as of yet.

We should try to engage them but we should not refrain from expressing our disapproval. A more accurate way of saying what I meant when I said we should not be tolerant of intolerance would be do say we should not approve of intolerance. But "Tolerance for everytning except intolerance." has a symetry to it that "Disapprove of intolerance." does not.

In the end, it never springs to the mind of the “tolerant” to make even the slightest attempt to identify with the intolerant. And with respect, this is why so many people on both the left and the right have no business lecturing anybody about the importance of empathy. Like Claudius, I have always considered the empathic approach, more than any other physical or political trait, to be what has always set this president apart from just about everybody else in public life.

My parents opened their home to international students all over the world and all sorts of lost souls from all walks of life that my sister and I brought home, I grew up hearing heated political discussions that never veered into nastiness. My mom raised us to believe that everyone was equal in the sight of God regardless of who they were, and that has stuck with me. My dad dislikes being part of the Teamsters but enjoys his work (delivering to convenience stores in inner-city Cleveland) because of the places where he ends up and the people that he meets.

Maybe this is the exception rather than the rule. As someone said above, "humble doesn't get you on CNN." It was just assumed that WE were the ones who were a little bit weird (having been homeschooled a few of those years), and that it made sense that no one did things the same way so we shouldn't get upset over it.

Conversely, I am always stunned to hear the ignorant comments made by people who would otherwise consider themselves very liberal and openminded but always tended to stick with their own kind and have lots of disparaging comments to make about our students from the rougher parts of town, or the "foreign kids" who eat all that "weird food." (I work in academia and sometimes it seems that the ivory tower syndrome kicks in and it's easy to see statistics, structures, and theory instead of individuals).

So yeah, don't know what the point of all that was... guess I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness here.

My personal view on "political correctness" is this: my parents (rest their souls) were very "politically correct." They also wouldn't rent to black people. I prefer speech in support of tolerance to the opposite, but talk is cheap. Tolerant is as tolerant does.

But here is the real crux of the matter; we owe it to others when we discuss matters to understand the assumptions we bring with us, and if we want to have a true discussion, do our best to avoid fallacy, which by definition short circuits discussion by reduction.

On the other hand, it is not accurate to say all opinions carry the same weight. We can see this most clearly where liberal/conservative identity politics rears its head on matters of scientific inquiry. Say what one might about one's religious beliefs, dna evidence, a finding derived from evolution science, can send a person to his or her death or bring about a life saving reprieve in a court of law. Religion, political affiliation are no excuses for perpetrating opinions that have no warrant as valid as those for which there is over a century of evidentiary backing.

I do not believe George Bush is a racist; in terms of the people he surrounded himself with, he seems equally at home among people of just about every background. But his reaction to Hurricane Katrina did display a tin ear to issues concerning the black community in New Orleans.

For me, the issue is more than "tolerance," which as a word sounds like watered down to blandness tobasco, but honesty and the willingness to listen if someone has something better, more substantial, more accurate to say. The willingness to acknowledge humanity and personal foible within oneself and stand corrected.

I do believe we were having a semantic debate. I am glad that you do not find them tiresome. They are a great help to those of us who wish to make ourselves more clearly understood. I clearly have problems with expressing myself because I often find that after several rounds of clarification there is no disagreement where there had been a percieved one earlier in the discussion.

Age is no barrier to this error. Pundits are paid for their ability to make it again and again.

"Liberal tolerance is what allowed Obama to neutralize Rev. Wright, and make his race speech."

You've confused this with "Liberal intellectual dishonesty".

"Liberal Tolerance" means enforcing PC speech codes, criminalizing policy differences, and using unfounded accusations of racism to keep anyone who doesn't agree with them marginalized. All, of course with the appropriate caveats so those with the correct political leanings don't get caught in the net.

You read a speech where someone says a wise Latina can make a better decision. You aren't sure you know what she meant, but the first three ideas that occur to you all seem okay. You grin.

Agreed. I made the mistake of conflating the question of Persia's first sentence with the referencing of the intern example I brought up in Persia's second sentence. Forgive my carelessness.

tolerance can be revoked. as a dhimmi under islam, jews and xians were 'tolerated'. when tolerance was revoked at times, for whatever reason, houses and businesses were burned, women raped and people killed. then, a new era of tolerance, until the next revocation. at times even under a regime of 'tolerance', jews and others had to wear distinctive clothing, or couldn't ride a horse because that would put them higher than a muslim. black people, asian people, latinos have all lived similar experiences at different times in the US and latin america. read about the chinese in california 1850-1880s. about black immigrants in panama 1880-1940. etc. etc.

i didn't like the 'museum of tolerance' for the same reason. i know it was started by jews and others, i just think the angle is wrong. i'm a man goddamit. i don't want to be tolerated. accept me or see what happens if you don't.

finally, political correctness is only applicable inasmuch as the offended group has political power. there are still sports teams called 'redskins' etc. because native americans have little political clout.

The reason that right-wing squealing about 'political correctness' is so disgusting is that they want to be offensive without facing consequences.

It is of a piece with a theology of salvation without conscience.

It might be said that American conservative ideology is a series of back-fillings and fabrications whose ideological roots trace back to efforts to justify slavery as a "positive good."

But it might also be noted that these roots were rotten from the core -- a clever ideology fabricated to conceal raw, corrupting self-interest.

As an example, I grew up in the projects and am white. Have been in many situations where the double standard over the n-word could be perceived as an issue. It sort of reflects the ongoing internal debate among, for example, black comedians... and I can see both sides of that one. On the one hand it has produced some brilliant comedy... your Prior, your Chapelle, your D. L. Hughley, your Chris Rock. On the other hand I totally get that some people would prefer never to hear it again, and that to some extent it can be generational, and that women are less comfortable with it than men.

But in the end I think it's an issue for black people to work out, and even if it gets left where it is... remaining controversial with a double standard based on pigmentation... I am comfortable with that, it's OK. Not a big deal to me to not say or type a word I have very little association with, essentially no investment in the need to abolish or rehabilitate if you will. Out of respect to the people who DO have that to deal with, I let them make the call, and however it comes out, if it even does, so it goes. Just so long as I can still watch the comedy... where, let's face it, it's not the word that's the crux, but the poetry, the perception, the delivery. Which despite the cultural difference, barriers, and even double standards, reaches out real clearly and effectively on a human level, which is the real point.

So nice job TNC.

It's about standards of social interaction. I know some people who I think are quite ugly. I don't say "Joe sure is ugly" to anyone, least of all Joe. There are people I work with who are stupid. I don't say "you sure are stupid" to them. Thinking they're stupid and saying it to their face are two completely different levels of disrespect.

Politically correctness is not the origin of the idea that there are some things you just don't say to people- that's basic social skills. Political correctness expands the list of people who are included in the social world to include women and people of color, and it's a very old idea. At what point in history was it okay to point and laugh and say "look at the cripple!" when you saw a person missing a leg? Everyone knows they're crippled. Pointing it out is rude, thoughtless, and socially unacceptable.