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Too often, civility is for the privileged. You may not have noticed, but leveling charges against the “Left” for being an “angry mob” has become fashionable among some on the “Right.” The president, who has an evil genius for inciting fury among the perpetually aggrieved, said in a rally Council Bluffs, Nebraska recently: “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. And that’s what the Democrats are becoming.”
Yeah, it’s the Democrats who—by protesting sexual assault/harassment, police shootings of black men, the separation of immigrant families, voter suppression, lack of equal rights for LGBTQ people, xenophobia and the loss of healthcare protections—are throwing gas on the bonfires of peoples’ prejudices. Gotcha. Glad we cleared that up.
What’s just as bad as having legitimate protests labeled “mob tactics” is hearing that the way to solve the divisions in our country is by a “return to civility”—which amounts to a call to those protesting injustice to just, you know, “be nice.”
But “be nice” is always what the folks in charge say when people start crying out about injustice. It certainly raises the question about how such a civility would work in the face of a system that disproportionately punishes the vulnerable, while disproportionately rewarding the people who already have their hands on the levers of power.
Calling for civility in the absence of justice is a power move, a prerogative of the privileged. It’s always doomed to fail for the simple reason that there’s no answer acceptable to everyone about what it means to be civil and to call out injustice. What’s the “nice” form of political discourse that makes everybody feel comfortable and addresses the tragic inequities built into the system?
I’ve been playing around with a few ideas about what that kind of civility on the part of the vulnerable might look like:
“I know you have deeply held religious convictions, so I want to honor those, but is there any way you could resist the impulse to fire me, kick me out of my apartment, or deny me entry to the public swimming pool just because I’m LGBTQ?”
“Do you think you might see your way clear to help us address the problems of unemployment, food deserts, and under-resourced schools with something more tangible than prayer (not that there’s anything wrong with prayer)—like some money or resources or something? When you get a chance, of course.”
“I don’t want to make a big deal of this or anything, and I’m sure you probably didn’t realize it, but those people you’re deporting, those are my parents. I’m eight years old, and I live in a cage. Thanks for giving me a forum to express my views.”
“I know you’re awfully busy and stressed, but please don’t shoot my black children.”
“I hope you’ll accept my apologies that my hijab makes you uncomfortable, but if you could find it in your heart, I’d like to ask you (as humbly as I can) not to harm me or humiliate me.”
“Would it be possible to tell your kids not to beat me up in the name of Jesus, just because I’m trans?”
“My daughter will die if you take away the subsidies I get for health insurance. I realize that rich people pay more taxes in a year than I make, and that country club memberships are expensive, but would you please be nice and not take away our healthcare. I appreciate the calm exchange of ideas.”
We’d all love to see a world in which patience and calm reason were rewarded by thoughtful action that would restore justice. But, at least at present, that’s now how our world works. And to say that people who don’t act as though it did are the problem, instead of the people who have a stake in the world staying the way it is, perpetuates a system designed to keep everybody right where they are.
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Photo credit: Pixabay