My high school had a club, Students United Against Intolerance. The name was intentionally ironic. If you unite against intolerance, you are, in essence, being intolerant of intolerance.
My point is this: we must unite against intolerance, but we cannot allow that coming together to exclude others. We cannot ourselves be intolerant.
We should do this:
Not this:
I’m not saying it’s easy. I certainly have the instinct lash out at anyone who, in the words of Lindy West, “will pawn their humanity for the safety of white supremacy” (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/her-loss). But we can’t.
Trump and his supporters have framed this debate in terms of ‘us versus them.’ If we continue to adopt that frame we will get no where. We will feed into their hatred. So instead, defend the Muslim woman as in that cartoon—and don’t stop there. Defend the gay man or white woman or minority person or whoever is being harassed.
Don’t tell me how you are going to hate more people. Tell me how to you are going to fix the problem of hate with love, respect, support, and kindness.
Until then, don’t expect to see me posting anything but photos of my dog or baked goods on Facebook.
