Let me start by saying that I am not a particularly tolerant person when it comes to intolerance. I find it very difficult to understand how people can be so vitriolic about another person’s skin colour, religion, accent, interests and so on.
Digging deeper, there are intolerances within each of these examples I’ve used. Take religion. Not only are there divisions and intolerances between religions themselves, there are intolerances within, say, Christianity. Catholic or Protestant? Jeez, it’s the same religion, folks! Get a grip. The similarities far outweigh the differences but apparently it’s much easier to focus on the 5 or 10% of a difference.
So what has brought this particular rant on, you may ask? Well, here’s what happened. Today I told a joke. Here it is…
What time is it when an elephant sits on a fence?
A: Time to get a new fence
Yeah, really awful joke. And someone was offended by this. Seriously.
“Why would you force an elephant to sit on a fence? That’s animal cruelty. Not to mention that you are being derogatory towards workmen who put up the fence!”.
I laughed until I realised this person was serious. Really serious. Angry serious.
So it got me thinking …
Have we got the point in society where we believe we have the right to complain about anything which offends us or doesn’t match our own thinking? Is it really offensive to the point you have to complain about it? Is there not a place to sit back and look at it from different angles, trying to see if the person is clearly a racist, bigot, homophobe (or whatever) or has just said something which has upset us because of our own, personal experiences/attitudes?
Sir Alan Sugar seems to have been caught up in this as well (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-24421453). His tweet, one could argue, is helping to highlight the issues about low-wage production lines in some parts of the world. Or, according to one person in Liverpool (Nichola Szeto), it is a racist incident.
Is it? I suppose it’s how you perceive it. And therein lies the rub. Sir William MacPherson, in his report on The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, defined a racist incident as any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’.
Perceived to be …
Perception is an interesting thing, though, and individuals’ perceptions may differ from others, either because they weren’t listening, have their own agenda, have experiences which have impacted on them or because they’re just plain nuts.
Here’s an example. A number of years ago I was giving a talk to about 300 people about various aspects of ICT and the impact on teaching and learning in the primary classroom. Near the end of my lecture, I was extolling the virtues of PDF files. PDF files are great. PDF files are helpful. PDF files should be embraced and ways should be found to make more use of PDF files … and so on. At the end of my talk, I was chatting to the organisers of the conference when a headteacher came storming up to us, shaking with righteous anger and with a face about to explode with rage. How dare I say those things. According to her, I was a disgusting maggot on the bottom of her shoe and she hoped I dropped dead from a disease. Woah! What?!?!? The organisers very abruptly stepped in and we soon got to the bottom of the issue. I imagine a mixture of insanity, deafness, stupidity and lack of context was an issue with this head teacher who thought I was talking about pædophiles rather than PDF files. Seriously.
(And this is why I now always refer to them as PDFs. It’s also why this story will flash into your mind the next time you hear someone else say PDF files and why you will probably now never use that term again.)
Perhaps it’s just too easy these days to react and complain rather than reflect and engage. When I speak, write, blog, tweet or otherwise engage in some form of communication, I should be aware of how what I say could be perceived–but it shouldn’t be at the cost of being afraid to say anything in case I offend someone. Perhaps we all need to be offended once in a while to make us think and reflect.
I wonder how many complaints I’ll get about this blog …
A.G. Pate 
So if one doesn’t have a valid point to make, what should it be called instead of a complaint? A rant? 🙂
While there’s lots of point’s arising from this complaint made against Lord Sugar. It will come down to this. The police won’t consider the comment to be racist and it won’t be taken any further in my opinion.
Plus he will be able to argue that he was making a point about perceptions of working conditions abet in a light hearted manner.
However the woman who has complained perhaps might have the impact of people thinking a little more before they tweet.(Which I doubt as people without consideration will continue to be inconsiderate.) It’s very easy to say whatever is in ones head before pressing send.
A complaint is only a complaint when one has a valid point to make.