A Passive War
The rules of social etiquette are some of the first things to which we are exposed. We are taught exactly how to be polite starting even before our first days of preschool. And that’s quite possibly one of the greatest tragedies of the American experience—one of the most damning hypocrisies to which we are subjected.
In today’s society we might call this phenomenon “political correctness”—the danger of which some folks seem to be catching onto. (In our efforts to evade offending absolutely anyone in even the most inconsequential or meaningful situations, we tend to insult human beings as a whole. We start out avoiding certain terms, certain phrases. We continue to “progress” until the fear of offence leads us to avoid certain topics altogether. Then the question is: is this really a progression at all?) This annoying habit is a form of censorship in its most harsh incarnation, a ridiculous standard according to which more and more of our lives seems to run. In her 1980 essay Civil Wars, June Jordan argues that politeness is even an instrument of suppressors:
But this has been the code, overwhelmingly, for the oppressed: That you keep cool and calm down and explore proper channels and above all, that you remain law-abiding and orderly precisely because it is the order of the day that you will beg and bleed, precisely because it is the power of the law of the terrorist state arrayed against you to force you to beg and bleed without acceptable recourse except for dumb endurance or mute perishing.
She unapologetically deems polite behavior “in the context of tragedy… a form of self-denial.” She is harsh. She is blunt. She is right.
Perhaps there is some irony in the fact that purely through the exposure of such extreme and undiscerning “politeness,” we become the vehicles by which that very hypocrisy is perpetuated. Surely we see that it is absurd. We know that there must exist a solution, or at the very least we are aware that we are capable of discovering one if we polite creatures work united. Yet we continue to blindly trudge through the muddy footsteps of our befuddled predecessors. So when do we stop? When is enough enough? Who decided our incessant need to avoid offense overrides our basic human right to have and voice our opinion? And why did no one question that man or woman? Well this is me questioning. This is me asking you, as you sit there quietly taking this all in, subdued, what will you do today—take a stand or fall to your knees?