#10: Let's Redefine Tolerance

Gateway to ideas.

Gateway to ideals. A new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in

relation to reading. Today's program. Let's redefine tolerance

is moderated by Anne Fremantle noted author and critic.

Our subject today is let's redefine tolerance. And our guests

are Mrs. neber until recently a professor of religion at Barnard. And they're

on a book Daniel Patrick Moynihan was an assistant secretary of labor in Washington

and the co-author was nascent Glazer of beyond the melting pot which was

widely circulated in magazine form and much read before being

published as a book it received the arras field Wolf award

in race relations and has just appeared in paperback. This is

Niebuhr and the Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan are going to discuss. Let's redefine

tolerance. And I'm going to begin by asking Mrs. Niebuhr if tolerance isn't rather

nasty thing ever sort of for Marjorie in kind of stuff and smears on

over one's worst feelings. Do you think the tone of the

tones is rather an insult to the equality of man as a

concept.

Well I think I would be a school straight away and say Are you talking about the word

or are you talking about the attitude. Because you might say we're all for the

attitude perhaps particular if we make it the power

and more positive but perhaps we a little part of the word you know.

Well that's the idea of this discussion that we must redefine tolerance tolerance perhaps is

as you just said about patriotism is not enough for the situation today.

Well if you say it's like I don't know quite about the margarine

business but shall we say those nasty gooey dressings people used to smear out all over

decent food fruits and vegetables. But we

don't like something fish and rob a negative.

I would like to push our study of the

attitude in two directions both in terms of the individual's

attitudes what makes a person free of

prejudice let's put it in that way or what helps a person to

grow up learning to shared some of his prejudices because I

think probably the human individual grows up with what after almost a Freud talked about

in the news. He's got to extend his

feelings about his family to people who don't look like him. The

deviance from the norm of his own kind of person.

And then we got on the other hand to ask more questions about it in the social situation the social

political situation.

That's how I met him comes in I think.

Mr. Martin would you agree with Mrs. Niebuhr that it's really basically

a question of not of semantics but of

going way deep down into the psychological makeup that's rather what your book on the

melting pot is about isn't it.

Well no.

Our book is about is another fact and directly related one

which is that the there has emerged

in the United States as there has emerged in the world a situation in which

no one ethnic or religious or cultural group is

dominant at a certain.

It's not a stable situation but a continuing one in which there are

in fact many different groups competing coexisting

at any event and happening in acting and at the same time in

the same social situation. Now the point about tolerance it seems to me as we

have tended to use it in America and I think as we have received it

from from England as in the accident toleration is

it presumes a certain specific social situation that of a

dominant culture with a dominant ethnic

religious nationalist group in control of

most of the main institutions economic religious

political institutions and into that situation is introduced to a

minority group a group.

Either either arrives on the scene as for instance of Polish Jews arriving in

America or it or it was always there as for instance the English Catholics

and or or the or the Scots or the Welsh or what you will.

Now these groups assert their rights too to exist

and act in some ways differently from the majority they say well you the this is the

Protestant kingdom but we're Catholics or this is a Protestant nation

or a Christian nation we're Jews.

Now you have to let us be and let us have our institutions to the

degree that they are central to this. And the initial reaction

through history to majority groups faced with that proposition is to put the people who

asked such favors in jail and burn them or lock them up or throw them out.

And over the years this turned out to be a difficult thing to do. It causes trouble

and it's unpleasant and it's an ethical and over a period of time the

proposition Rosewell that you this is not this is no way to treat people you must

you must learn to tolerate their differences. Well at this this

point I think tolerance has a superior inferior relationship.

There is implicit The notion of a superior group.

There is in any event explicit. The fact of superior power.

I think we moved into an age certainly in the United States and

in the world clearly where this fact of superior power no longer can

be asserted and perhaps because of that and perhaps because

of very different things are the proposition of superior

value superior worth is no longer very easily defensible

either in any event.

It it it becomes difficult for a person looking at the whole

situation to have much confidence and a factor in the assertions of certain

superiority which are same simultaneously made by a dozen different groups all referring to

the same universe.

That is rather also the point made by we'll have a Protestant Catholic do you remember

this book. But this is new but you had something to say about your

experience with the quest for identity among young people of various

ethnic and religious.

Well I think it has an individual and a social relevance the concept of identity that's

why James Baldwin in using the concept I

think has both presented a very good case and one that's had great

appeal to many particular perhaps among the young who are finding their

own identity. I'd like to go back a little bit historically though when you think

of the history of this country and the first column is and

Roger Williams and Madeline Lund and you see how this has to be worked out

almost afresh in every situation. It doesn't carry over

that even with the historical example of William Penn.

It was in the expensive suburbs of Philadelphia the mist to go water could speak about

the ethnic groups the push to Surat and I

gather from someone who worked in Philadelphia but there was more

prejudice in the expensive saga about ethnic

groups or which had expensive meeting houses in the wonderful

Quaker tradition than you might have got in the free for all of an in big

industrial town perhaps even in the middle of Philadelphia I don't know enough about it. And I would like to

ask you as an expert Mr. Marnham whether the free market.

Competitive interests isn't of sometimes a very good sort of good for the charity of God

because in the marketplace of ideas and forces some

precious politically you have to not

only accept but welcome the contributions of different groups and you've

got to count them you've got to have a balanced ticket you've got to remember this

group will want this and if you perhaps go to meet them you'll

find them on your saw it in an issue.

Exactly. This is a program about books and

and and you raise a subject in which books have had some very considerable influence and in

fact you can you can trace the history of this home to something very much in

books. The initial our idea which we are sort of

emerging from I think in this nation was that we would be.

The term melting pot very popular that somehow or

other people coming into this nation from all diverse origin are there

would somehow or other melt down into a sort of uniform product now

we mistakenly think this notion that emerged in the late

19th century when the eastern and southern European migrations

came actually it's an 18th century notion that the people who lived on the American

continent in 18th century were as much conscious of their difference as one

from the other as as were the people in New York and 1890s. Those differences

tend to be kinds which we don't think of as vastly significant today but at

that moment to be a Quaker in Philadelphia and to be a Presbyterian

in New York and a Congregationalist in Newhaven looked like a very vast gulf

Indeed and how indeed would any such nor mostly distinct peoples ever learn to live

together.

Well the idea that somehow or other it would melt

down into some uniform product emerged. The first book to talk

about this was to quote cool letters of an

American farmer and it was very interesting that he proposed it would happen

because gradually religion would fade away and that

no Americans were not going to be religious people and when they seek to be.

Quaker or Presbyterian or congregational St. they would cease to have any difficulty

with one another.

The Emerson spoke of comes and then came in the

early turn of the 20th century Mr. Israel Zangwill who wrote

his play The melting pot in which he he described

the mixtures of Christian and Jew and

Russian and German and so forth in Staten Island as it happened

and it was very interesting this idea was seized on Teddy Roosevelt but it was the most wonderful

thing in the world. I was going to solve the problems. It was a curious fact is that it was of

course English. His parents were Polish Jews who had emigrated to

England and only a very few years after resigning will propose this new world in

which in which the problem that was going to be solved interesting the problem was solved and his play

was a problem how do Russian Jews get along with questions that really had much to do with

Americans and all that was the daughter of the artistic rat whose father had been a

Zaurus general who killed the father of the young Jewish intellectual they married. So that's

how it stopped. Well very few years after saying well wrote his book he

became a Zionist and. He repudiated the proposition that all men

could ever melt down inside. And he repudiated St. Paul on that that there shall be neither

Jew nor Gentile. He said On the contrary this will out it's in our blood.

Well not going to one but to say that this idea that was so important

to the melting pot so important from Theodore Roosevelt was an idea that assured

him that in the end most people would look like him. You know in the.

Sense it was obvious that people who didn't look like him weren't getting much done in this country. And he

was well this was a reassuring proposition.

But what has changed in the competition you describe

what has happened over the past 30 years is something rather profound that is in the

forest experience of the Depression and then the war.

The American intel intellectual community

changed ethnically.

The books began to be written in the 1930s in the 1940s and 1950s.

Suddenly ceased to be books which with any sense could be read had a dominant

old American Protestant tradition and in fact the men who emerged to

be as the new writers of our time in quite

disproportionate numbers turned out to be Jews

Catholics negroes.

Yes in about that order.

And they were not only are they not. That was not only their identity but

it was I was an identity is central to their work you can read Saul Bellow's

book her dog friends we had we all been there like Norman Mailer. Or

James Baldwin clearly without saying that this identity is fundamental to them.

It's what makes them go round and look at themselves look at the world look at it through that

internet identity and and having asserted this. You have a new

cultural situation. There is no longer a dominant grow an inferior one.

There are a number of water lilies competing perhaps and certainly coexisting

menu but would you say the groups that

you know and we all know who are writing like these a very strong

Jewish and and a Catholic I think Catholics started with the

last hurrah didn't they.

Well Flannery O'Connor they've got it gone a long way from the last hurrah of its kind I think and

some of the younger writers. But anyway do you think that these books really make a

difference for instance Mr. Moynihan and Mr. Glazer's book is I believe used in the University

of California Los Angeles in the substance of copies and I was

wondering if these this new awareness of not tolerance but commitment

to anti prejudice which is happening today in

these big Western universities is almost an arrested do you think it comes partly from

reading from from being aware of.

These books at the top which was theirs in the books are part of

the cultural thing and the people who read. I think

everybody. Is aware I've forgotten the title of that new book

about the wasps written by a wasp. The first thought was that the

Starbucks Yass told elf for the day off every event is suitably

again. But those of us who live in a place

like New York particularly and perhaps inhabit the so-called intellectual world I'm never

quite sure where it is. All right well the

wasps are in a minority. That the bright

young men and maidens who are in Mons classes and getting the wonderful

fellowships form the most interesting the electric sort of people

not the same racial stock as you and me Mrs Freemantle aberrational

stock is down some had poor whites.

Let's face it long teeth you know along cheap but. But I

think. The facial types incidental and advertising were changed. They're

completely different if you look for instance in an English periodical and

an American periodical facial in me the young man and the young maiden

unless they're the sort of people who still subscribe to the theory that you sell men's clothes

better if they've got a bony face structure.

But on the her I think of women particularly the faces a model much more not

in a melting pot face but a face that is not characteristically a ladies equivalent of a

senator Saltonstall which is a perfect boss face I think

and I think also this reading thing I think that you know when we were young Mrs. neighbor

I don't know if you were very moved but one of my key things I read was vote

thing on title and said Mom had made those who light candles in midday agree with

those who were going yeah it was a night of your son and things like that and I mean voter I meant a

tremendous amount. And so did people like Jeem

or do or the people who were

determined to to to deal with but our own backgrounds were very

very.

What should we say restricted.

Yes but we were converted I think by the way to a better point of view by what we read

about it in June and I wonder if that's what's happening today in the colleges if there's a good deal of

of reading yourself into.

Asay Nanda under better frame of mind I would like to ask a question about the whole

psychological development of the person because today we live in a world not only where

there are these problems and whether all the writers but we live in a post for idea as well as a post

Marxist and Darwinian world.

I think if we go backstage shall we say to even our generation of

Oxford that we observe the proper I think

sequence of development which is to react. Young

man and young woman does react We hope I mean this is getting rid. Shall we say

of the tendency toward cultural incest. And

when we think of socks our Deep South the shame

and the scandal of places there's a kind of cultural incest going on. And

it comes out in the facial stalk That's why I'm not altogether being completely

batty when I talk about the bad teeth and the cheekbones and the narrow

chests of either the inbred English or the inbred white Southerners.

Nature doesn't like this sort of thing. Inbreeding isn't a good

idea. And culturally speaking it isn't a good idea. And you

not I as people born in England can be by the probable fact that we've been a nation of mongrels

that all language which is it is. And Nick I'm Barnett's new book

if you like about in the English language is a beautiful in Mongol language so we can say all sorts of things.

And in England some of the most lively English is American English because the

American gift for expressive slang which comes from the West or the negro anywhere

else is enriching English English.

Don't you think also with this admirable thing I think Mr. wanting

to make this point. People are getting more aware of their

individual allegiances like the French

Canadians for instance or the Yemenites and the joy of having It's

an explosive process at the same time as a kind of

withdrawal into a new kind of ethnic

sort of data to your awareness.

I think I just got much more important things to say than I but you see

this business about the development of the person the child of the young man the adolescent.

Stay reacting Otherwise we get these perpetual adolescents who have never got part out of their

system should we say a protracted situation are.

This is why the CO concept of identity is so useful for our young people. You've

got to get away from pardon Mon so your wild oats and you spin pad is to mimic an

intellectual That's again a new situation they don't have to bet is nowadays.

As the writers of the 20s did. In order to find yourself

and this business of finding yourself whether it's Paul in the deserts of Arabia

or in the Paris of the 20s all wherever it is you get a way of course to college

and get excellence phrase all the modder Torreon college and even military service I

think gives young men our chance and perhaps the girl a

couple of years job in the office a kind of model told them of finding

himself and herself who they are and

where they are then presumably they get that measure of detachment and a measure of

self-knowledge to be able to look back upon Maan their cultural background and say

yes or no.

That was alright I quite like going home now. I got a few tired of baked

beans. If you're a capital or large and the card

I got off a tiny bit of lox and bagels but gosh you know they do taste good

occasionally and you get that so far from six of

dialectic a sort of art or something to it

and I think this business of the identity of our groups.

When I first came to this country it used to be disposed in the early 30s.

The Food and Sinclair Lewis wrote a book about the awful food of this country.

It was over with creampie bad apple Piper song and

across Juno and settlement cook book came out with good ethnic cooking

and I think ethnic cooking has been a very potent part of our

development board.

Tolerant but a more interested attitude about differences in how good a masculine but I don't this I think is

becoming very much as you know I greatest home Jim and I agree

and I think this idea of identity is probably

the key notion which can take you from the general

proposition to columns which were evolved out of a

majority Tarion situation. To some working principles

about how to behave in a in a situation of what you might call cultural

stalemate. First let me say that I think that the

idea of ethnic and religious identity has

turned out to be more important for our time than we had expected. We have

even now we're still talking and we still do fall most define world politics if you don't if

you think about it in terms of of the 19th century

materialist doctrines about economic production where are you going to

be a capitalist country or are you going to be a socialist country or a communist country. But

right under our noses. The way the world has almost just

never resolved that question has just moved away from it and its questions whether

Africa is going to be black or white where their candidate is going to be English speaking or

French speaking. Whether this country will be Jewish or Arab that country

or Flemish I mean these issues have turned or this country will the self

be a bi racial community or will it not be. We

must we must remember that you know there is a certain amount of understanding of the

Southern white situation is necessary if you're going to do anything with it.

Now what it turns out I think is that the ethnic identity religious

identity has a value in the modern world that we hadn't suspected it's

got to something I suppose like the value of the extended family gives you

an identity that you can hold on in a society which doesn't give you many many

others. And so it's useful. And so it persist in anything it

probably gets more elaborate and people there's a grandfather effect coming in

which is that people who people like the things they're people who are third generation

except perhaps the first generation. Yeah well and so and I think. Kind of a question of

identity how do you get people to work together. I think what you have to face is

the Erick Erickson's concept of higher identities

and that there are one and there are more than just one level of violence really. And for instance one of the

the great single most important fact of race relations in this country the

reason we were have been able to break through in the last four years the reason we passed the Civil Rights

Act is that the Christian churches and the Jewish

organizations entered the fray and made this a religious

question as well as an ethnic one. So it became possible for people

who had quite separate identities on an ethnic level to join at a

higher level identify identity which is a question white black and white quite different

one from the other a Jew from Catholic from Protestant

and not all agreeing on ethnic cooking or does nothing and not wishing to a great you know

wishing to mock me still being quite willing on a level higher up to say we are all

children of God and they're fundamentally equal.

And did you think this was given the accolade this yeah. Honored to Martin Luther

King. I mean that's that's become a word position.

It's not only an American if I may say I was also honored by the by

President Johnson who prevented the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is the highest civil

honor conferred by the president of states in peacetime to Reinhold Niebuhr

by my side has done some magnificent work in his writings over the last 40

years and this was very much because he helped to create this sense of higher

identity very much through the journal questioning crisis and through his writing but you know

we have to see finally to redefine tolerance because we're coming to the

end of our time.

This isn't about what would you say was the in one or two words was the

alternative for what was the definition of tolerance.

Oh dear no to hard to put into a few words I would say that it

but are how I would like to redefine it is to ask

for a positive or examination

of what is involved in the person's attitude

toward his fellow beings and in the social

group an awareness of the free market of the

exchange of types and ideas and contributions.

Yes I know that you know that this is hard to find in a word

acceptance. Even It has a sleepy sound. It's really more on an active recognition

isn't it. I mean active record I think. Ultimately again for the religious

and ethical it ought to be almost the Wellcome of

differences. It's a for their for their own sake.

Thank you very much indeed we've been discussing let's redefine tolerance and

the guests today were Mrs. neber until recently a professor of religion at Barnard and the

Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan assistant secretary of labor in Washington and

also from beyond the melting pot. Thank you very much indeed Mr. Monaghan and miss his

new book.

You have been listening to gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which

ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program let's redefine

tolerance as presented. Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel P. Moynihan

co-author of Beyond the melting pot and Mrs. Reinhold Niebuhr

until recently Professor of Religion at Barnard College Columbia University.

The moderator was and Fremantle noted author and critic to

extend the dimensions of today's program for you a list of the books mentioned in the discussion as

well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared. You may obtain a copy from your

local library or by writing to gateway to ideas post office

box 6 for 1 Grand Central Station New York.

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