When intolerance is acceptable

As a young girl growing up in northern Alabama, I was continually told by my parents that the word “hate” was as bad as saying you wanted someone to die. We had joined the Church of Latter Day Saints, Mormonism during this time. No, not the kind with multiple wives. The mainstream kind that believed in wearing onesie underwear to prevent you from having un-pure thoughts and that forced my family to have a ceremony in a temple that joined my brother and I with our parents - like a wedding.

It was the early 70s, and my parents wanted us to have religion for structure. They also thought it would help their marriage if Mom could better accept her role as subservient to my father. It didn’t work, and we left by the time I went to middle school. I remember a great deal of my time as a Mormon even though I was quite young. It was the one place I felt safe because my mother wouldn’t drink on church days and she pretended, we all pretended, to have the perfect loving family.

To hate or say you hated, often led to othering people and denying them of their rights. My parents had just come from witnessing the 60’s civil rights movement in Alabama. They knew we would be exposed to anti-Black rhetoric and racist words from our classmates and even some of our teachers in the public schools. Fourth grade at Lakewood Elementary was where I first heard the N-word. Lakewood was majority Black, and it didn’t take long for the white boys to start using the word on the playground.

I first used it when I became angry at my father. I was climbing my grandmother’s stairs to get my things after spending the weekend when I told him to, “stop being such a N-word.” He just looked at me dismayed as Grandma came from the top of the stairs to slap my face. This was the once and only time she ever hit me.

My parents made sure I knew the history of that word and of Black Americans after that.

My whole life, other whites have felt entirely too comfortable saying racist things to me. It is my skin, hair and eye color. I am a white supremacist’s idea of perfection if you ignore my thoughts. I was used to these encounters by the time I left the south as a young adult in 1995 to join the Border Patrol. My normal response was a slight awkward laugh and then I would move on making a mental note to be careful of that person.

It was only once I moved to California with the agency that I began to see my own racism against Latinos, specifically Mexicans. Under the guise of national security, I was trained by Mexican-American Border Patrol agents that there were good ones and bad ones. The ones already in the country were good they said; the ones coming into the country now were bad. This differentiation on who to hate was in their words, because many of their parents entered illegally years ago.

This was difficult for me to understand, and I knew the line I was walking was thin if not invisible.

Since leaving the Patrol and beginning this journey, I have not had many people use racist words or express hatred of migrants as often. People generally know who I am and what I stand for these days.

The other day as I was walking one of my dogs, I ran into a neighbor. She is a retired nurse, living alone in her senior years. We were discussing the politics and mass deportations. She is a staunch democrat; a white woman who sees the brutality and hatred all around us. She is my mother’s age, and I often find myself longing for conversations with her because my mother is now gone and had been for the last dozen years because of her hatred of me.

My heart aches every day from missing her.

We were just a few houses from mine, when I mentioned the Palestinians in Gaza. “Oh Jenn!” she said sadly as if she felt sorry for my ignorance. “Palestinians are worthless. Good for nothing. They need to be wiped from the face of the earth”

I winced in disgust, and she reached out with her hand to comfort me in my shock.

“Honey, everyone hates the Palestinians. We would be better off without them. They are worthless. Not even human. We’ll all be better off when they are gone.”

“We cannot discuss this topic any further,” I said as I walked away.

In the past, I would have stayed quiet simply because she is elderly; out of respect or more likely just the trained response. But I find myself with no room, no tolerance for these justifications any longer.

I said nothing in this instance because it was a waste of my time. I am not going to change her mind.

I was reminded of the academy and how my instructors who were Mexican-American tried to explain to me the difference between their parents who entered illegally and the people entering today. The parsing of who is worth my hatred and who is not based simply on their ethnicity, was and is hatred. It is othering, stereotyping. It is racism.

When my father and I got home that afternoon from Grandma’s, he talked to me about that word and why it was not to be used. He said something to me I would never forget: “Everyone has their N-word.”

By this he explained how easy it is to blame our problems on groups of people. When I found myself thinking of a group as being this or that, it is a moment to question that thought. It’s an opportunity to ask myself why I think this way and question if the thought is it actually true.

These are the lessons that ate away at my conscience as I hunted groups of Mexican migrants for six years. We can all fall into it. Some of us more easily than others. And sometimes the intolerant like to hide their hate in concepts like religion, national security and sovereignty.

Today, they want you to believe it's the migrants working in the farms who are worthless, good for nothing. It's not. It's the people who are rich and not paying their taxes. It’s the hate that has created border enforcement sucking up billions, trillions of dollars. We could have shelter, food, education, health care for all if we invested in a humane immigration system & made the rich pay. It is the intolerant and greedy who deserve our hatred.

There is no opinion or middle ground to reach with those who would hoard resources, those who believe others should not exist or those who believe concentration camps and genocide are acceptable answers to any problem. There is no both-siding of this issue. Any policy or law that violates another’s right to life and liberty is anti-human and therefore illegal. This is the line that must be drawn.

The only acceptable intolerance is of those who preach hate.

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