Whenever tolerance is used as a scapegoat for intolerant behavior, it’s always important to consider the Paradox of Tolerance: "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

And the definition of what it means to be intolerant is shifting daily.

Intolerance is pretty easy to identify. I would guess that what you’re referring to is the degree of intolerant behavior that people choose to respond to or not.

That is, certain types of intolerant behavior have been “accepted” by society when it is directed at certain marginalized groups or concepts. What’s changed is that the behavior is now deemed as wrong, but it was always intolerant.

I'm talking about things like calling it racist that a black girl in an H&M catalog has messy hair.

There’s a difference between behavior and discussion. Most of the intolerance today seems to be intolerant of speech.

I agree we should not tolerate behavior, but someone saying (or in this case tweeting) something isn’t necessarily the same.

Being tolerant of intolerant speech, leads to intolerant behavior and intolerant laws. When someone suggests that it is acceptable that there are groups of people who it is acceptable to discriminate against, they are encouraging intolerant behavior against those people.

In this case, it's mild, seems like a statement from the person that they will delete their related tweets, have realized they were wrong in their younger years, etc. would probably be enough. It all depends on extremes.

So yes, I agree that speech and actions are not the same. There is a social response to intolerant speech, and there is ideally a legal response to intolerant actions.

Every time I see this article linked in a context similar to this one, I question whether the linker has read the third sentence within:

"Popper took pains to make clear that he did not mean the expression of intolerant words and ideas, but in fact the opposite: They who must not be tolerated are those who wish to silence discussion and debate."

When the philosophy is "we should have tolerance for other world views" then intolerance of world views is in fact a problem. The apparent contradiction is one of semiotic similarity, not content or hypocrisy. If you say, "I believe in non-violence!" It's no contradiction to fight an attacker that will otherwise kill you. You cannot maintain a tolerant community with large swathes of intolerance.

The thing is that there are some things you shouldn't tolerate. Ideas like racism or homophobia are deeper than just a difference in worldview, they actually hurt real people. For me personally I won't tolerate homophobia for public figures because I have multiple people in my family who are LGBTQ and I've seen that sort of rhetoric hurt the people I care about.

That being said I always believe people can grow so if they've apologized for it in the past I'm willing to give them a second chance.

Edit: the whole point of what people generally term tolerance is to lessen pain for people who have been marginalized. "Tolerating" the people who cause that pain is running counter to that movement.

Edit2: tolerance has not and should not be unconditional, to point out an extreme case no one has ever asked me to tolerate an unprepentant rapist or murderer, lack of tolerance for people who are actively causing harm is fairly well established.

I also won’t support racism or homophobia in public figures. But I’d also add (big-S) socialism to the list. In terms of deaths caused and prosperity foregone, socialism is right up there in terms of “actually hurting real people.” How many fewer babies would be dead in India or China had those countries embraced market mechanisms decades earlier? That’s a quantifiable harm, and it's massive.

But I suspect many people would agree with two of mine, but not the third. So that brings me to the question: how do you decide what’s intolerable? Harm can’t be the only criteria because many genuinely held positions are so held because people believe that other approaches will hurt real people. And who gets to decide what falls into the category of “intolerable ideas?” People don’t usually express comic book villain versions of those ideas. Who is racist--Harvard, or the asians suing it over its admission policies?

In response to your edit: defining tolerance in terms of effect on marginalized groups is admirable, but it leads to somewhat paradoxical results. Ideas that hurt a broad segment of society are tolerable, while ideas that affect fewer people are intolerable?

We never will all agree on what is intolerable and that's overall healthy for society, it's how we allow ourselves to grow. I don't want to argue for what is tolerable or not, just that for me I'm comfortable not tolerating certain things.

Tolerating certain things, or tolerating certain people? OP is about kicking people out of society for single past errors.

EVERYONE is racist. So what do we do? Cancel humanity? "Intolerance of intolerance" is just the latest nickname for tribal battles, that relies on insane acrobatics like computing who has the most intersectional victimhood in order to determine who has to be #cancelled and who is a hero "punching up".

Journalists have become the biggest hypocrites for what is right and wrong, and I think it’s because they feel immune to the values and norms that the rest of the society is held to.

Sarah Jeong still works for the NYT, after far worse and more recent behavior at non child age than what got Carson King "cancelled", but since her intolerance is about old, white, men, it's celebrated.