I came across this book last week and decided to get a copy from my library. Once I got the book, I read it, and I have some thoughts about it.
We should remember that squeaky wheels, although annoying, get the grease. We also remember that nice guys finish last.
My first thought is that you should read this book. It makes a lot of very important points about the asymmetrical political dialog in the United States. You know what I mean – someone like #P01135809 makes an absolutely outrageous statement like, oh I don’t know, encouraging Putin to invade a NATO ally without worrying about the reaction from the United States – and when someone on the other side of the political divide says something negative about it, we’re all told to calm down. Women are called “shrill” and Rep. Cori Bush is told she’s too loud (she’s African-American). Conversely, California Senator Laphonza Butler is complemented by her white colleagues because of her “temperament” (see, she’s a Black woman and she should be loud and angry to fit the stereotype).
Even Michelle Obama (whom I otherwise approve of in every possible way) got on the civility bandwagon when she counseled “We they go low, we go high.” Yeah, we see where that’s gotten us.
This book is basically about how powerful people have always told people without power to calm down, not to be so negative, to lower their voices, to stop sitting in at lunch counters or joining half a million women in Washington, DC on January 21, 2017. In short, to stop asking (sometimes literally) for a place at the table. Powerful people don’t generally cede power until they’re made uncomfortable, and incivility makes people uncomfortable.
People on both sides counsel everyone to “lower the temperature,” as if the temperature was not first elevated by the outrageous behavior of the 45th POTUS. Mainstream media companies platform overt racists in order to appear “fair” – another word for civil. We are told to work within the system, to be patient and our time will come. When DA Fani Willis gets angry on the stand in Fulton County as she defends herself against charges that she may in fact be a sexual human being, the reactions often include mentions of how she should have remained calm.
No, dammit.
Some things are worth getting publicly angry about. Remember when we all wanted tee-shirts that said “Nasty Women Get Shit Done” in response to #P01135809 calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” after one of the 2016 presidential debates? We need to recall some of that anger and, yes, incivility.
This book focuses on a series of civil rights icons – Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Elijah Mohammed, and Martin Luther King – to assess how well civility (as opposed to confrontation) worked for them. The author is Professor Alex Zamalin, whose career has been rocket-like since he received his Ph.D. from City College of New York in 2014. From New York he went to the University of Detroit Mercy, where he held a position of Assistant and then Associate Professor. Now he is a full professor at Rutgers. This is one smart dude, and we should pay attention to him.
I’ve written and deleted a couple of paragraphs about this book, but I can’t do it justice. Here’s an interview with the author from a couple of years ago; it’s an hour long, but it’s worth an hour.
When I first saw the cover, I thought, Oh, dear, I'm doing something else wrong. However, having read the post, I understand that someone has always been telling me how to behave. I'm done with that. This is an important book, and I'm glad you've brought it to our attention.
Excellent as always.