thanks to an old grad school friend's visit from out of town i spent the whole weekend doing pleasurable things: cooking, spending time with friends, laughing, drinking, eating, and cutting flowers to within an inch of their short lives. i had no time to spare on all things imus.
but today is different. all my doctor appointments aborted for reasons or another so now i have a rare loose afternoon to my self and i'm spending it thinking about manners. yes, manners. etiquette. the preferred way to treat one another. the 'please and thank you' moments of our lives.
manners are occupying my thoughts because it's just too hard to think and speak about race or gender. outside of academic or heavily politicized circles, regular people have no idea what i'm talking about when i say things like 'white privilege', 'race privilege,' 'internalized racism', 'misogyny,' 'minstrelsy' or 'hegemonic discourse.' they get upset when i say that patriarchy is a system, rather than a guy who sits across the bus from you. they don't want to look at power, context, our sexual or racial history or think about what it means to be implicated in cultural practice.
they just want to say bad words and get away with it because it makes them feel good. (sort of like how a child discovers the thrill of saying his first 'fuck.')
and the only way that people will get the message, especially (but not exclusively) white and black men, that saying these things (i.e., bitch, whore, nigger/nigga, nappy dug out and all the especially tart things men like to throw around their funky locker rooms or board rooms) builds up like plaque and makes all of us sick (especially those of us who are called bitch, whore, ho, nigger/nigga or nappy dug out) is to call them out on how very rude it is.
more than anything, white people understand manners, and for a long time, manners was also how the black community policed itself: whatever our actual economic status, we acted bougie. but bougie fell out of vogue once the huxtables disappeared from TV and now it seems we have to bring the bougie back. this is not without its problems; being bougie or suddenly becoming a culture of 'manners' is uneasily akin to 19th century behavior books. it concentrates on the manner of things rather than the matter, so to speak. for a feminist like me to say 'if only people weren't so rude!' - it sounds weak, school marmish and old fashioned.
but what else can our culture handle?
it has proven it can't handle big, complex thoughts like sexism and racism; it has had at least a century to grapple with and discover its finer self. but it hasn't. so, like a spoiled, feces-throwing child in an episode of Super Nanny, it must be put on the naughty mat and made to face the corner and not move until it really means 'i'm sorry' and knows what it said and why it can't ever be said again.
calling for a national rebirth of civility and manners in our public discourse is infantilizing, i know. but, after all, isn't this what our parents told us whenever we got into trouble and whined about it: "if you're going to act like a child, expect to be treated like a child."
11 comments:
Just surfing, when I stumbled onto your blog site. A nice refressing read on racims & manners! I think you are absolutely right, a call for a return to basic civility is very likely as much as our contemporary society can handle. (And even that may be too much;rude and obnoxious has never, I don't think, held such sway!). The only suggestion for a slightly different spin I'd like ot offer is this: The strong emphasis (among some African Mericans) on manners, respect and "dignified comportment" predates the whole "acting bugie" phenomenon. It has different, very old and strong cultural roots among some of the very poor, but very dignified newly freed African Americans of the 19th C, (and laso among the Native Americans whom they often intermingled with). An example Bugie Black People ask you what you do for a living fairly directly & show you around their entire homes when you first visit". These are also white mainstream manners. Traditional "dignified black people", on the otherhand, led you to a nice sitting room, and would never dream of asking you what you did for a living because they were/are sensitive and attuned to the fact that it might embarrass you to have to answer: I'm a custodian or a housekeeper. "Dignified" and "bugy" can look very much the same, but what is driving all those refinements is often very different. Some African & NAtive American cultures relly did place thehighest value on true refinement of the spirit, which necessarily included "not acting like a (crude, rude, immature & uncultivated) fool". Thanks to creating this space of dialogue!
eden,
thanks for stopping by and for making 'civility' more nuanced - you made a finer distinction than i was able to express.
i wasn't sure if being 'bougie' was the best way to express what i was thinking, but it was the best way i had to think about it. i wonder if 'dignified' escapes some of the classism implied by 'bougie.'
and i wonder if i want to truly avoid accusations of classism. hm.
funny how we fall back on our old superpowers. your analysis has to do with class and manners.
my analysis, of course, addressed the fallacy that Nappygate was somehow a language double-standard.
Nappy dug-out. You goofball. I'm surprised you didn't include hittin' the butt potato.
it's why jane austen is my friend.
i can't wait to read it!
eh, well it seems to me that what people refer to as "p.c." (god so tired of it) is pretty much some dim understanding of "manners," which as Daring Bad Boys (and Girls) they must of course rebel against. so--no, i don't think that's much of a starter, i'm afraid.
i wouldn't give up on our collective ability to handle big complex thoughts, personally. it's not a linear process, and y'know, 300 million people and a whole lot of shit going on, and yeah this privilege crap is pretty damn intractable.
but that doesn't mean people CAN'T understand it; it's that they don't WANT to, because there's too much at stake.
so go at it at that level, i think.
people hold onto ancient resentments in large part because they are convinced in some dim inchoate way that they themselves have been cheated. and as it happens, they're usually right. it's just that because it's all dim and inchoate, they blame the wrong people, or the most easily-at-hand people, or the safest people.
that hasn't really been tackled enough, i don't think; not framed as such, at any rate.
I guess I see white's politeness as something of an issue. We feel like we need to be "p.c." - so our language is not racist, but that doesn't necesssarily reflect actual thinking or attitudes. So the racism is more hidden, ambiguous, and confusing. We also then get to convince ourselves we aren't racist because we would never say anything racist. Confronting that racism becomes so hard.
I guess I see the solution accepting, as the Avenue Q song says, "everyone's a little bit racist." In accepting that, and maybe taking a tiny bit of the shame out of admitting that, we can actually try to change things.
I remember when I was training to work at a domestic violence shelter, we went through an anti-racism training. We were supposed to partner up and share some of the prejudices we held, some of our own racist beliefs. I was prepared to talk about some of the prejudices I had formed as a kid against "chollos" and wanted to kind of get past that. However, the woman with whom I was partnered denied she was at all racist - and that kind of ended my ability to talk about my own prejudices. I didn't believe her at the time and I still don't - it felt like a p.c. exhortation, and not very self-reflective (I mean really, if you grow up in US culture - you have been fed so many prejudices that it is impossible to escape them).
I'm not sure if that makes sense at all.
Brava! Well stated. I think my greatest frustration with this country, its people and way of life is the complete and utter lack of manners in daily interactions. From rudely cutting one off in traffic, to not saying "thank you" when a door is held open for you to pass through.
This country is based upon the rights of the individuals but historically the greater good was at least part of the discourse. Manners, to me, allow the greater good to thrive and advance while still keeping true to individual rights.
You have the right to be an asshole, but the greater good also has a right to not have to deal with you.
or something like that. too much coffee.
well, as a woman of color who's getting mighty tired of waiting for people to 'get it', i guess i'm wondering if us folks in the target communities (women, people of color, gay folk) - if we even frakking care anymore.
i mean, i'm struggling with the almost unpoliticized notion that i don't even care if a racist or bigot changes his mind or thinks harder about these things; at this point, trying to educate the 'masses' about privilege and bigotry is such a frustrating, brain busting endeavor that i just wanna go for the quick fix: change the behavior and at least make my life a little easier.
it's not very revolutionary of me, i know.
I totally think it is okay not to care - and I'm sorry if I implied you ought. I have no desire to help or educate my sexit, hecking student who sits at the back of the room and challenges me at every turn. No desire at all. I don't care if he has a come to jesus moment and starts respecting me, all I want is to smack him and for him to start behaving. I'm tired of him, and all I want to do is hide rather than having to face him each day. So, I totally get what you are saying.
You know, I am feeling really inspired by this post. Etiquette is a really big deal down in the south where I'm from. I think that there's a reason why people here seem to value it more than in other parts of the country where I've lived. I am going to have to write about this later on this week. What a good topic!
shrinky: when i taught at the university, i'd tell my fellow teachers that my student's didn't have to like me - hell, i barely tolerate them. but they'll sure as hell respect me. and if that's what reinforcing manners will do, then let the civility police do their stuff.
bint: thanks for the word about the post. when all this stuff was happening i was just in a place where i didn't even care if people stopped being racist or sexist. the old liberal position of respecting the 'conversation' was giving me a heart attack and the urge to 'educate' just meant i was wasting my time with ignoramuses who didn't want to be educated.
so, i thought, why fight it? let them devolve in their morass of racism and misogyny. let them become the savages they're announcing they are to the world; it's not my job to help 'save' white folk/men from their own worst impulses. but you know, i can dictate how i want to be communicated with and reinforce some kind of social standard that, at least, puts a cover on someone's ignorant ass.
again, make my life easier and we'll all learn to get along.
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