My rabbi lives in Israel, as some of you may know, and visits here several times a year. We differ on I/P and on some other political issues, but we talk about politics as well as other things in a caring way.
The last time he was here, he asked me if he was imagining it, or was the political rhetoric really toxic - he had noticed it in Chicago, where he has family, and here in Tucson? I told him he was not imagining it. He asked what I thought had brought about the change. I told him there are a lot of people who cannot deal with a black man being in the White House. That made a good deal of sense to him.
I just finished reading the rec listed diary by gchaucer about African Americans leaving Daily Kos and a general atmosphere here which tolerates hateful language towards many groups, including people of color, women, trans-people, fat people - I could take the list also into the Israel/Palestine debate here and the current dispute about anti-Semitism, and anti-Arab prejudice.
I think the problem is a refusal to accept other people's experience and to examine our own. And that makes me wonder why there is such an attitude of defensiveness, so that instead of listening to someone say "that offended/hurt me" and apologizing and saying "I won't do it again," people feel attacked and feel they have to fight back. It's like saying "I'm not a (racist, homophobe, sexist, anti-semite, whatever) and therefore you have to put up with whatever (racist, homophobic, sexist, anti-semitic, whatever) things I say." It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
How about "I'm not a (racist, homophobe, sexist, anti-semite, whatever), so thanks for letting me know I came across like one."
Personally, if I thought someone was hopelessly prejudiced against any group, I would not take the trouble to correct him. Telling someone that what he said offends or hurts me or others carries with it an assumption that the person may not have realized the import of his words, and gives him new information so he can change his behavior.
It is a matter of accepting that someone else may have a different experience, and that we can learn from them. It's a matter of realizing that some of the ways of speaking we have learned may have a very painful history. It's a matter of being willing to recognize that being clever may be less important than being kind.
This community is rich with people from all sorts of backgrounds, who have done all sorts of interesting things with their lives. It is also capable of great fellow-feeling, and has often rallied to help someone in trouble. The fact that the atmosphere here can be so toxic that people feel compelled to leave because they feel battered is even more troubling in the face of the amazing good we are capable of.
I was planning on writing an article tonight on Netroots Nation that emphasized the widening of the netroots represented there. But I could not do that until I had tried in some way to address the narrowing here.