On Beyond Tolerance

5-6-2026

On Beyond Tolerance: There are moments in our lives that stick with you, teach you, come back to you in critical times. They point out your own deficiencies and if you want to become a better person, you acknowledge them, learn from them and change yourself.

In my union life and personal life, I’ve had a number of those moments. But few have been as powerful and impactive as a hard rebuke I got from one of my closest friends, Gregory Bowers.

Greg and I started at the Bethlehem Steel, Steelton PA Mill at the same time. Both of us were the 70’s generation. An opinionated white guy and a quietly determined black guy who both ended up finding our “work home” in the Bethlehem Mill in Steelton, PA.

We both found in the union movement a place where we felt comfortable. Where we could use our personalities and skills to help others and make change happen. A place to fight for better. We became a team that, along with other like-minded workers, built a political caucus, became the leaders of our Local Union and formed an inseparable bond. We balanced each other and were ten times better together than as individuals.

So, it was somewhat startling that in a conversation about racism that he uncharacteristically got angry with me and read me off. I had made an offhand comment that what our coworkers and the nation needed was more “tolerance”. He went ballistic. TOLERANCE? I don’t want to be “tolerated”! I deserve to be RESPECTED!

That was the moment. I had unintentionally violated Greg’s pride and humanity. A big chunk of my white privilege exposed. I had no glib comeback and just went silent. He could have punched me in the face and not caused as much pain and nasty self-awareness. I had set the bar way too low. Greg was a full person and was demanding his right to be seen and treated as such. His outburst immediately changed my view of what human rights were and forced me to confront my incomplete understanding of them.

The goal of real respect became my measurement of how I treated others and what we both strived for in every part of our work together. We weren’t just dealing with contract violations and the improvement of our members’ lives. These were people who above all deserved respect. It changed how we worked, how we related to people and the outcomes we strove to achieve. We formed a stronger bond within our Local Union.

Greg’s gone now, cut down by kidney disease. But his impact stays within me and many he counseled and worked with. Because of him, and that moment he created, I recognize that a great part of our nation’s misguided path is our increasing failure to practice mutual respect. In many ways we’ve lost the ability to meet each other as human beings. We need a resurgence of respect for human dignity for all people.

I don’t understand how people who have worked with others not like themselves, or lived in diverse communities, can have personal friendships, but ascribe to hateful and dehumanizing political views. You hear, “I have black friends”. Or “the women I work with think I’m the best”. Or, “my neighbors are from Mexico and they’re cool”. Are those relationships fake? Or have we somehow separated those relationships from how we want our nation to set policy? An important question when many are supporting public policy that purposefully demeans and degrades those very people we know and claim as “friends”. It’s duplicity that should make us rethink ourselves and what we support.

The insistence on respect is something that is challenged in many ways and requires conscious discipline to practice. No one is an angel in this regard. I’m not above getting frustrated and falling into name calling and dismissals. Yet continuing to insist on respect as a bedrock of a healthy society isn’t optional. Particularly when we have diverse opinions or are contending with difficult personalities. Getting called out on our disrespectfulness is both healthy and necessary. We aren’t receptive to these kinds of “corrections” these days. We need to toughen up buttercup.

There is a difference between respect and agreement. We’ve lost that distinction. It is possible to have very real differences and still maintain respect. That’s the key to understanding where diverse people come from and then ultimately where we can find agreement. We also have to provide people the space to change and grow. A divided nation can’t make progress until a new critical mass of agreement is achieved.

Political organizers have come to understand that traditional ways of persuasion have not been particularly effective in today’s polarized public discourse. An entire training and organizing effort has been built around something called “deep canvasing”. Instead of knocking on a door and handing out a leaflet, activists start a conversation. One that centers around who the person is that has opened the door. What their personal experiences have been with whatever the persuader is promoting. Then discussing the activist’s own story of how they came to be at the person’s door. This kind of one-on-one discussion is respect in practice. It connects people’s personal experiences with policy issues. And it can change minds.

A starting point of respect and an effort to find common ground is the opposite of judgementalism and position-taking. To practice respect means you have to challenge your own views and prejudices. It takes us out of our comfort zones, makes us work at our interactions and requires perseverance. It means we develop the maturity to realize that we won’t agree with other people on our personal checklists of good and evil. Yet our ability to do just that is what separates us from lesser creatures on this earth. In those conversations, a quiet principled person may just give enough of us the wake-up call we need to find the path that will fix our troubled nation.

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