Once upon a time, there was a racist tree. Seriously, you are going to hate this tree. High on a hill overlooking the town, the racist tree grew where the grass was half clover. Children would visit during the sunlit hours and ask for apples, and the racist tree would shake its branches and drop the delicious red fruit that gleamed without being polished. The children ate many of the racist tree's apples and played games beneath the shade of its racist branches.
One day the children brought Sam, a boy who had just moved to town, to play around the racist tree. "Let Sam have an apple," asked a little girl.
"I don't think so. He's black," said the tree. This shocked the children and they spoke to the tree angrily, but it would not shake its branches to give Sam an apple, and it called him a nigger.
"I can't believe the racist tree is such a racist," said one child. The children momentarily reflected that perhaps this kind of behavior was how the racist tree got its name.
It was decided that if the tree was going to deny apples to Sam then nobody would take its apples. The children stopped visiting the racist tree.
The racist tree grew quite lonely. After many solitary weeks it saw a child flying a kite across the clover field.
"Can I offer you some apples?" asked the tree eagerly.
"Fuck off, you goddamn Nazi," said the child.
The racist tree was upset, because while it was very racist, it did not personally subscribe to Hitler's fascist ideology. The racist tree decided that it would have to give apples to black children, not because it was tolerant, but because otherwise it would face ostracism from white children.
And so, social progress was made.
Lovely -- I wept. Society progresses because it's too personally inconvenient not to. Also, if you haven't seen it, you might get a wheeze out of Albi the Racist Dragon.
The racist tree is racist. It hates black kids. In the context eightbitsamurai used, he was just clarifying that the tree didn't accept the black child because it figured black kids aren't so bad, but because the white kids protested. In some contexts, it would be tollerant for the tree to hold onto it's views, but Samer described that the tree dislikes black children enough to not give them apples. Maybe soon the tree realised that black kids are no different from the rest but at the time the tree was tollerating something it didn't like for the white children to come back.
So the racist tree is committing thoughtcrime by thinking things which we don't approve of or disagree with, even if he or she decides never to act upon them? I'll agree that people who fall outside of society for some reason often pretend to toe the line to prevent negative consequences. And that for idealists, as I can be, in situations invving racism, it's easy to feel that that's not enough. But you can't fucking thought control people. The realization that it's important to at least act accepting shows more maturity, insight, and care about society than a lot of bigots possess.
I think I must have mis-interpreted backtoyoujim's post. I thought s/he meant that the tree wasn't tollerant because it changed it's view(which seems like a pretty bad interpretation now) so I explained what I thought Samer meant by I agree with what you're saying though, every step in the right direction is good.not because it was tolerant,
This is an awesome and provocative piece, I loved it. I felt as though I've read it before though, I did a quick search and found this that says it's by Alexander Blechman. Glad you posted it though, but just wanted to be sure people knew who the author was.
In reality, however, the tree finds other trees, of which share the same views, and become ever more entrenched, growing hatred for society as society grows hatred for it, and nobody benefits. The lesson of the story may be true for businesses, who rely on competition to succeed, but it isn't true for individuals. For most, a community hating you results in you separating yourself from a community, and learning to dismiss them, their ideas, and everything they say. People literally will still call themselves Nazis. Those groups function and live on those mechanisms.