In the middle of all that is called “freedom of speech”, I feel debates that our society evokes, are actually kept on a leash by a term called “tolerance”. We are surrounded by constant debates about racial discrimination, women rights, minority rights, crime, narcotics etc and keep hearing how people should be more tolerant, but what is left of the mentioned freedom? We cannot hold a normal conversation without carefully choosing our vocabulary, not to offend any parties. In the hands of the public, tolerance has become a utopian goal, but the means and even reasons of achieving it are still unclear.
It is natural that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin, their sex or religious beliefs. There are things that should not be tolerated that occur with every race or religious group. We should not let crime get mixed up with race for example, and no crime should be tolerated because of a criminal's skin colour. It is highly hypocritical to excuse a crime with tolerance. A blind man cannot walk into a store and steal something, saying that it is not his fault, as he cannot see.
In places with large minority groups like the United States or Estonia, for example, every action and word must be controlled to avoid offending a member of the minority. Although not through the person's own fault, a loose sentence or deed will be harshly judged by the media, or media's own blunders will be punished. We are told to tolerate different people and lifestyles, but through this tolerance we might end up being oppressed ourselves. The idea of being tolerant has become an objective itself, without knowing why we need it. After all, different cultures and races do not live together for the sake of being tolerant. To tolerate should mean mutual respect, not accepting society's blind spots. As it is, the public automatically associates the word “tolerance” with people or groups deemed “different”. This kind of odd classification itself creates fear and detachment. Crime will always exist and so will controversies between different cultures, but we should not overlook them so we could call ourselves tolerant.
Tolerance, with the way it is forced upon us, can end up being not tolerable itself. There are laws and there are moral values which we follow and can do so without dividing people into groups and calling people, who do not agree with certain points, intolerant. What is human and what is right is obvious in most cases and we should not let fear of being deemed “intolerant” stop us from making decisions.
