Jonathan+S’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Title of Speech=

Acceptance

=Text of Speech=

Tolerance is a word all of us are familiar with. Many of us would like to consider ourselves tolerant of others, myself included, but what exactly does tolerance mean---what exactly is tolerance? Is it simply ignoring something you do not agree with? Is it pretending that something doesn’t exist or that it’s not important? Is it disregarding peoples’ projected shortcomings because you don’t like that certain aspect of them? By definition, to tolerate means to allow the existence, occurrence and the practice of something that you may not necessarily like or agree with. By this definition, “toleration” is almost a passive form of intolerance: you do not like it, you do not agree with it and you may think that it is bad… but you allow it to happen without interference. Toleration is a broad subject, far too broad for me to cover every aspect of it. There is religious tolerance, racial tolerance, gender tolerance, political tolerance, sexual orientation tolerance, tolerance for the disabled, the old, the young etc. etc. It’s huge, it’s massive and it’s really confusing. I’m going to attempt to scratch the surface of it and then dive deeper into it. In the sixth grade, I took a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance---now I'm not sure how many of you did the same thing or did the same activity, but our guide led my group to a set of two doors, one on the left and one on the right. The one on the left said, “Not completely tolerant,” and the door on the right side said, “Completely tolerant,” She stood in between the two doors and said to us, “Pick a door to go through, if you personally think you’re tolerant of everything, go to the right, if you think you’re not tolerant of everything, go to the left.” Puzzled, we stood there for a while until one kid raised his hand and said, “I’m tolerant of everything.” Amused, the guide answered, “Go through it then.” He then went up and opened the door, but there was a wall behind it and he couldn’t go through. The point that was being made was that no one is 100% tolerant of everything. We all make generalizations, assumptions and presumptions about others all the time whether we’re aware of it or not. I personally catch myself doing at least once a day, making judgments about peoples’ character or personality just because of what they might be doing or what they may be wearing. This is not fair of me to do this, after all, I don’t know them; I don’t know what they’ve gone through or where they’ve come from. Same for the way people act---everyone has different ways of thinking, family backgrounds, beliefs, and ways of talking, ways of processing things like happiness, grief, sadness, rejection and anger. Maybe they were abused as a child? Maybe they’re having a bad day? Maybe someone close to them just died? Whatever it is, it’s not for me assume what the reason is and it’s not for me to think of things that are happening to them that would justify their behavior to me. Why would they even need to justify anything to me? They’re their own unique person, special in their own ways and it is not my place to categorize them.

Most all of us buy into stereotypes be it from music, jokes or influence by fiends---stereotypes about race, religion, sexuality, gender. Starting with racial, I haven’t ever been made fun of or bashed because I’m half Mexican or half Eastern European, but my grandparents have. On my mother’s side, my grandparents are both ethnically Mexican. Throughout their entire lives they were looked down upon as less than others because they had light brown skin and because they spoke with a small accent. Even in Ventura, I have heard people degrade them with insults like “beaners”, “wetbacks”, “strawberry pickers”, (even though they were born in Califronia) and have seen people try to take advantage of them because they believed that since they were Mexican, they were uneducated or wouldn't know any better. Although my grandparents turned a blind eye to these insults, I could see that it hurt them deeply inside. They were stereotyped and these stereotypes were completely untrue. Thankfully, there are not very many racists in Ventura County, not that I've been exposed to at the least, but I know some of you may have been. There is a difference between racist and racial though. Racism is the belief that one race is superior to another, while racial is something that is connected to, well, a race or ethnicity and that isn’t necessarily true. I’m not too proud of it, but it is a bit funny though… my grandparents with their accents used to say, “We stood there for a few days.”, Stood instead of stayed. So we’d say, “Oh really? But did you sit down while you were there too?” They would also say what sounded like “French Room,” instead of “front room”, so we’d jokingly say, “Oh that room that all the French people hang out in? We know it well.” My mom wasn’t very happy with my father and I and my sister would call us racists---then I’d have to explain the difference between racist and racial to her too and well, I had to do it more than five times. But… don’t be like me; don’t make fun of your grandparents. Back on track, we shouldn’t judge people or stereotype them because of race or culture. Each culture is rich and beautiful and unique and we as a nation should respect other cultures. This is something that I think has been in a decline for the past few decades. Now something that I have seen a lot at Foothill is the lack of tolerance and the complete disrespect of religion and the making fun of those who follow it in any way shape or form. It’s so bad actually that many students are reluctant to share their beliefs to others for fear of being attacked verbally. I’ve heard people calling religious students stupid, idiots, gullible and telling them that they don’t have the ability to think for themselves, and I’ve seen these same people get angry at others who try and criticize their point of view. I am not religious, although my family is, (I’m a deist) but I respect other peoples’ religions---what reason would I have to not? We need to respect others' ways of thinking, it’s what makes them happy, complete and they shouldn’t be attacked just because their ideas or teachings aren't agreeable. Some people try to read the bible expecting it to be like a story book or a book of facts, and when it doesn’t meet their expectations, disregard it as dumb and weightless and make no attempt to understand its proverbs and its paradoxes. What does it matter whether someone's beliefs are actually true or not? What difference does it make in the grand scheme of things if one person believes that the world is destined for destruction while another believes that it can still be saved? The world will be saved or destroyed without them and everything will end or begin as it always should have, fighting over who may or may not be right will get us nowhere.

Instead of silently or verbosely hating others, I don’t believe that more tolerance is something that we need in our society--- its acceptance. We need to learn to accept people for who they are, not just tolerate their existence or put them at the very back of our mind. Some may be gay, lesbian, bisexual, speak differently, have different body types and so on. Around the time of the last presidential election, my family received a pamphlet from the Republican Party. Among its many questions, one caught my eye, “Mark the social problems in the current age and date that are most important to you.” Two caught my eye, one flag burning and the second, homosexuality. Flag burning because it’s so obscure and relatively harmless and if some person wants to go outside and burn an American flag, great good for them? It doesn’t affect me at all. And then homosexuality because I had no idea that it was an important social “problem”. I don’t consider it a problem and why would I? Homosexuality does not affect me negatively in any way, shape or form, my rights are not being challenged by these people and they are certainly not oppressing me. In fact, they are really nice people. Another little spiel I have about the subject is a study done by psychologists at Clarke University, Massachusetts revealed that, after studying 500 kids through their childhood with gay parents, children who have gay or lesbian parents tend to do better in school and are generally more motivated, tolerant, accepting and understanding of others. Furthermore, no correlation between these kids’ sexual preferences and that of their parents’ were found.

As I said before, toleration by definition is allowing the existence of something you may not agree with. I believe that we shouldn’t strive for toleration because well, toleration is that thing that comes into play---you know---when you’re hungry and you eat too many burritos and well… your stomach may not have a lot of it. In the America I wish to grow old in, I want to see less toleration and more acceptance. I want to see more people making efforts to understand each other’s’ ways of thinking before jumping to conclusions. I want to see less young adults and children being shunned by others for trivial things such as weight, height and sexual preference.

Before I end, I will leave you with this quote by Lui Xiaobo (shao-bow),

“Hatred is corrosive of a person's wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation's spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and block a nation's progress to freedom and democracy.”

Word count: 1679

=Cite Your Sources=

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/gender-wage-gap_n_3941180.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/gay-parents-better-than-straights_n_1208659.html