Tolerance is a power-laden denial that masks racial inequality

Evidence

No race here. No imagination of the racial because the terms are deadened, taken away. And so no conceivable recognition of the marks of its effects, let alone of the effects themselves. Buried. But buried alive. Tolerance expresses these denials directly. Acknowledging begrudged presence as desire of willed absence. The refusal of equality – of standing, of access, of outcome – in the name of an ecumenical largesse, a hostile generosity. Tolerance is always expressed towards the tolerated, as I have argued elsewhere, from the tolerating agent’s position of power. I have the power and position to tolerate you. I am active; you the tolerated passive, powerless to affect me in my tolerating save to get under my skin, make me even less accepting of your distinction. My social power to tolerate turns on all those like me likewise disposed towards you. Terminating angels. Race disappears into the seams of sociality, invisibly holding the social fabric together even as it tears apart. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 835

Categorization

• QUESTION: The image ‘race disappears into the seams of sociality, invisibly holding the social fabric together even as it tears apart’ - worth chasing how invisibility can simultaneously hold and tear.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘claims that is’ thesis on small acts of decorum toward corpses, and to the silent-race mechanism themes from the reader’s prior curations on silence and communicative absences. — connects to: Tolerance neutralizes subversion by transforming radical ideas into fads. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 221; Student activism contextualized Marcuse’s essay on repressive tolerance — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2587; Cordial racism legitimizes inequality by refusing to name race as its cause (+1 more)