Tolerance for the Intolerant
The Washington Post
by William Raspberry
Will America ever be free of bigotry?
Of course not–not as long as its population comprises human beings. Let’s try a more realistic question: Will America ever reduce bigotry to manageable proportions?
I offer two answers. The first: It already has. The second: It never will.
How can both these things be true? The first (so it seems to me) is obvious. By almost any measure and on almost every front–race, ethnicity, gender, politics–there is palpably less bigotry in the land. And what bigots remain (with such obvious exceptions as skinheads and their ilk) seem increasingly uneasy with their bigotry–as though they know it is something they need to work on.