Tolerance is our new word of the month and is a virtue that will help our children and ourselves to get along in the world. Tolerance can be taught. One author I read as I looked at this subject tells the story of being in the airport and seeing a large group of children with a t-shirt on that said, ” Children Are Not Born Racist.” How profound. We are not born intolerant, we learn it from the environment that we live in.
I grew up in a home where though there was not any overt intolerance that I remember, it was subtle in the way things were said and some feeling of superiority over certain races. This amazes me now, since I realize how poor we were, how little we had, yet there was this air of superiority due to skin color. There is a Native Indian saying, “Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.” If we are going to influence our children in regard to tolerance we must practice what we preach and preach what we practice.
Over this month I will have some clear cut things we can do for ourselves and our children to learn and practice tolerance.