I will attempt to articulate my thoughts on getting people to be more tolerant of others, such as other "races," other sexualities, and other brain workings (autism, etc). I will first illustrate with my own story, then talk about what I believe does not work (forced acceptance) and what to do instead. I am of course no expert, though I pride myself on skills of observation of society. Why? I'll answer that later. I'm going to be very honest here, so now's not the time to quote only a single sentence; you have to see the whole story.
My story: I mostly grew up in 97% white schools in north Orlando, Florida. The few Black kids in my elementary school classes always seemed to be the rowdiest of the class. As a kid, I associated their annoying behavior with their skin color. My guesses as an adult now, after education pedagogy and some sociology classes, are 1) these particular 2-3 kids were just rowdy, as some kids are, 2) parenting, as in maybe they couldn't be around, 3) undiagnosed ADHD. There's all kinds of things we could propose and never know, since it was 20+ years ago, but the overall thing is, they weren't annoying because they were Black.
In 5th grade, my homeroom teacher was Black; I don't recall learning much as far as Black culture from her, but as far as exposure goes, seeing that a Black teacher is the same as a white one means something - just another teacher. One that I definitely began learning about being seen as Black in America was my 6th/8th grade English teacher. She once talked about her grandson being insulted as an Oreo; with this I became aware that there was an expected culture to being Black, which he was apparently going against. She talked about ill treatment at times "because (her) tan was permanent."
In 7th grade, I did Odyssey of the Mind with a team of six other girls, one of whom was Black. One night at our house, as we worked on the set and costumes for the skit, she put on BET on the TV. I had this inner thought of "oh, of course, that makes sense she would watch that," some kind of clicking epiphany. That channel had always seemed so other and kind of far away to me, but here she brought it into my world and made me see it as just another channel anyone could watch.
I want to say, in all this time, my parents were not entirely helpful in teaching us about tolerance. My dad continues to make jokes about cotton and Black people, or lumps them in a group when insulting them. He would compare Black history to Jewish history and say the Blacks have nothing to gripe about. My mom is less racist, maybe because she's not originally from the South.
(If only adults could play nicely together like kids.)
This little description is important, because one day on a school bus in high school, I was looking out the window and saw a lady walking a dog. It was another epiphany moment. In my head at first, I had thought, "a Black lady walking a dog." But I suddenly mentally crossed that out and said, "no, a lady walking a dog." I was deleting the way I'd learn to speak from my parents, who said things like "a lady with a baby" (meaning white) versus "an Asian lady with a baby" or "a Black lady with a baby." In that moment, I decided they were all just ladies. When I got to Florida State, which was much closer in parity with demographics, my growth continued.
At this point now, I want to switch and talk about my evolution in tolerance for gay people. So middle school for me was 2002-2005, a time when being gay was still some kind of crime. My middle school band director for example hid himself by going on dates with women from time to time (stuff I learned as an adult). Anyway, I thought being gay was something people made up for attention. This one bully in middle school announced, in a sneering voice, "I'm going to be gay when I get to high school," further fueling my "it's for the attention" thought. I told that to an older gay man coworker later as an adult, and he thought that was the kid's only recourse to coming out and felt sorry for him.
I continued to look down on it, maybe because again, I'd learned to from my parents. Some time in high school doing research, I felt sad when I learned George Takei was gay, as if this was some stain on him. With the gay girl in Across the Universe, I just eye-rolled and thought, "whatever, it's some kind of artistic movie anyway, all the characters are weird."
(Prudence sings "I Want to Hold Your Hand")
Not much happened in high school to help this, but college was another story. Through a combination of people feeling more free to be themselves and probably knowing more theatre kids, I began to see it as something real, more genetic than chosen. Watching movies like The Bird Cage and seeing how The Legend of Korra ended, I began to get used to the idea more and even feel happy for these characters ending up together. Learning that it's been a thing throughout history too shows that it's natural and not new and made up to this time. The same goes for transgender (those who want to become the other sex; nonbinary is a whole other thing to discuss). At first my thoughts were, if it requires medicine and surgery, then it's not real. But again, seeing that this occurred in history shows me that it's real and should be accepted.
So that's my story for now. What worked here? It was never pushed in my face. Yeah, it was there in the movies and TV shows, but even those movies didn't have this forceful message of "if you don't accept me, you're a monster." The characters just happened to be gay. Or like with BET, just having it on showed me it's still just people trying to make others laugh. But definitely the access to the stories needs to be there. But we need real stories; we don't need to recast characters as Black or gay just because it's shock value or "what matters is the character's personality and values." Even George Takei was mad that Simon Pegg made Sulu gay in the new Star Trek movies. While Pegg meant it as a tribute to Takei, Takei only had the original creation by Gene Roddenberry in mind, who was not gay, and thought this was not something to change.
(The reveal of new Sulu's husband)
Forcing tolerance leads to weird results, such as the idea of black hobbits. If they all come from one area of the world, why wouldn't they look the same, given climate and geography? Unless you make up some story that this clan migrated from far away to the Shire and then stayed and intermixed over centuries. You get people who say "Frozen wasn't progressive enough" because it only had one gay family. These people don't understand the majority of the country wasn't ready for more at that time. If you do too much at once, the "moral majority" of America will fight back with their purity/family values. Things have to be done slowly.
I once read an article (really wish I could re-find it) that talked about (intolerant) people's approval of a main character depending on when in the story their "otherness" was revealed. If they were told at the start that the character was gay, for example, then they may stop reading or continue with distaste. If they got about 100 pages in before discovering it, then they've already lived with this person a while and don't mind as much, may even root for them. Based on this and again good stories, it's important to highlight the humanity above all else, not just have a token minority character for the sake of "being diverse."
What do I suggest then if you're trying to become more tolerant? Read, watch movies, talk to real people about mundane topics (don't talk about the history of Black violence for example until you're really friends). There was a year I asked gay people I'd known for a bit how they came out, to understand more about it. I continue reading about nonbinary people, as this is a huge battle to accept, and in the end, I plan to write another article about that and the fact that I would rather we go a different way in society. I would rather we expand what is available to wear and do hair as for men and women, but still be called men and women, he and she. So that's coming in the future.
Why do all this now? Because I was at a party yesterday where someone encouraged me (after a reading of my horoscope ascendant and et cetera signs) to use my voice and be controversial. So here I am finally voicing some stuff.
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