Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "attack-in-synagogue"
Civility 101: Why Age, Gender, And Race Matter
With a Trump supporter sending dysfunctional bombs to his favorite liberal targets and a bigot killing Jews while they're worshipping in a Pittsburgh synagogue, everyone is at least pretending to believe that we need to be more civil toward each other. But it's hard to be civil in the current political climate when the illegitimate President is campaigning on hate and fear. Hatred breeds more hatred, which leads to incivility, which leads to more hatred. It's as easy to call for civil discourse as it is to offer thoughts and prayers, but how do we make our discourse more civil? We can start by treating each other the way we would like to be treated. In other words, try to follow the golden rule. If we don't like to be cursed, yelled at, called names, and bullied, we shouldn't treat other people, no matter what their race, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, or party affiliation, that way. However, as I indicated in an earlier post (8/5/18), we also can't treat everyone the same. We can't nor should we treat old people the way we treat children, women the way we treat men, or blacks the way we treat whites.
Most sane people understand that special treatment is appropriate for people with disabilities or health problems. Only an insane person (looking at you, Trump) would publicly mock a disabled person. Most also understand that older people should be treated with respect. When younger people call me "mam" and hold the door for me, I appreciate their good manners and sometimes silently thank their mothers (fathers or guardians) for raising them well. Occasionally, I've become irate because I believed I was being disrespected due to my race and then realized that my dark skin had made the younger person underestimate my age. If a relatively large woman in her early fifties asks for help taking a chair back to her mother's room in a senior facility, she might be treated dismissively while a woman in her late sixties will be treated the way the residents and the clearly older daughters and/or wives of residents are treated. I make a point of letting the employees of Pacifica Hillsborough know that I'm old enough to live there so that they will treat me with the civil respect that a woman nearing seventy deserves.
My dark skin causes some people to treat me better than they would if I were white and others to treat me worse. I argued in that earlier post that the first response is more appropriate. Dark-skinned black people have been treated worse than lighter people for too long; we are more likely to be compared to monkeys and apes, to be killed by police, and to be disrespected even when we are older or in positions that usually command respect. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN and even novels by black writers of the late 19th and early 20th Century (James Weldon Johnson's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN was the exception) portray dark-skinned blacks as ignorant and buffoonish. In some cases, they are portrayed as evil--rapists, murderers, traitors to their race. Sadly, there are still people who assume that dark-skinned blacks are stupid, no matter how much education they have, and evil, no matter how kind and morally decent they are. Civility requires that people who have been so oppressed be treated better than those who have lived more privileged, entitled lives.
Of course, white women have also been oppressed. Black men won the right to vote (although they had trouble exercising it) before white women did. And, although there have been many more white female governors than black male ones ( partly because there are many more white females than there are black males), we still haven't had our first female (of any race) President or Vice-President. Still, just as I said in my book THE BRONZE RULE that an old white woman would be the person least likely to be suspected of committing a crime (young, dark-skinned black men are most likely to be suspected), they are the Americans who are most likely to receive civil treatment. I found Judge Kavanaugh's attack on Senator Amy Klobuchar very interesting. Kavanaugh was undoubtedly angrier at my senior senator, who had submitted the letter that led to the METOO hearing, and my junior senator, who had made him look bad in an earlier hearing when she asked about laws governing men's bodies, but because Senator Feinstein is much older than he is (her being Jewish would be a factor today but probably not a couple of weeks ago) and Senator Harris is black/Indian, he attacked the younger white woman. He probably realized shortly after he attacked Klobuchar that going after any of the women was a bad idea, so he quickly apologized. He should have taken his anger out on one of the white men (which eliminates Booker) nearer his age (which eliminates Leahy).
Obviously, the people who should be the most civil are white men with power. In other words, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence should be the most civil people in America. But Trump and McConnell are old, and Trump is also insane. Should we excuse them because of those mitigating factors? Of course not. Just because I'm an old black woman doesn't mean I should curse and bully younger white people, especially if I expect them to treat me with respect. I think we old folks should be allowed to be a little crankier and more impatient than the younger ones, and we old black people should be allowed to be a little angrier than everyone else, except old Native Americans, but incivility is unacceptable, no matter how old we are, what our histories of oppression are, or what disabilities we may have.
The most uncivil person I saw this week was not Trump but a blind, elderly white woman who was seeking help at the Bank of America ATM. As I walked into the scene, she was blasting the bank employee, a fortyish Asian woman, who was trying to help her. I don't know how long the tense encounter had been going on when I arrived, but the Asian woman quietly left before I started my transaction. At that point, a civil, elderly white man who was just a bystander (he may have been walking by or had completed his bank business) let the blind woman know that the employee had left and offered to go into the bank to see if someone else was coming out to help her. The uncivil blind woman turned on him, yelling at him, asking why he couldn't help her, saying she had other things to do and didn't have time to wait. When I realized that my evil glare was not effective because the woman couldn't see it, I decided to mind my business. As I was leaving and the civil man, looking worried and sad, was entering the bank to search for help for the uncivil woman, I said quietly to him, "You are a very nice man." I was being unusually (for me) civil in that scene because my instinct was to loud talk the uncivil woman, to let her know that no one had to be nice to her just because she was blind, white, and a relatively old woman.
We can all learn a lesson from the elderly, civil white man and even from the elderly, less civil black woman in the Bank of America scene. During this uncivil time in our history, we all need to work on being more civil by treating everyone the way we would like to be treated, treating some people (the elderly, disabled, black and other oppressed people) even better than we would like to be treated, and (most difficult) resisting the urge to react uncivilly to incivility. When faced with incivility, we can do what the Asian woman did-- walk quietly away. Or we can do what I did--ignore the uncivil person and compliment/encourage the civil one. If we're extraordinarily civil (I'm not), we can do what the white man did--treat the uncivil person with kindness and civility.
Most sane people understand that special treatment is appropriate for people with disabilities or health problems. Only an insane person (looking at you, Trump) would publicly mock a disabled person. Most also understand that older people should be treated with respect. When younger people call me "mam" and hold the door for me, I appreciate their good manners and sometimes silently thank their mothers (fathers or guardians) for raising them well. Occasionally, I've become irate because I believed I was being disrespected due to my race and then realized that my dark skin had made the younger person underestimate my age. If a relatively large woman in her early fifties asks for help taking a chair back to her mother's room in a senior facility, she might be treated dismissively while a woman in her late sixties will be treated the way the residents and the clearly older daughters and/or wives of residents are treated. I make a point of letting the employees of Pacifica Hillsborough know that I'm old enough to live there so that they will treat me with the civil respect that a woman nearing seventy deserves.
My dark skin causes some people to treat me better than they would if I were white and others to treat me worse. I argued in that earlier post that the first response is more appropriate. Dark-skinned black people have been treated worse than lighter people for too long; we are more likely to be compared to monkeys and apes, to be killed by police, and to be disrespected even when we are older or in positions that usually command respect. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN and even novels by black writers of the late 19th and early 20th Century (James Weldon Johnson's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN was the exception) portray dark-skinned blacks as ignorant and buffoonish. In some cases, they are portrayed as evil--rapists, murderers, traitors to their race. Sadly, there are still people who assume that dark-skinned blacks are stupid, no matter how much education they have, and evil, no matter how kind and morally decent they are. Civility requires that people who have been so oppressed be treated better than those who have lived more privileged, entitled lives.
Of course, white women have also been oppressed. Black men won the right to vote (although they had trouble exercising it) before white women did. And, although there have been many more white female governors than black male ones ( partly because there are many more white females than there are black males), we still haven't had our first female (of any race) President or Vice-President. Still, just as I said in my book THE BRONZE RULE that an old white woman would be the person least likely to be suspected of committing a crime (young, dark-skinned black men are most likely to be suspected), they are the Americans who are most likely to receive civil treatment. I found Judge Kavanaugh's attack on Senator Amy Klobuchar very interesting. Kavanaugh was undoubtedly angrier at my senior senator, who had submitted the letter that led to the METOO hearing, and my junior senator, who had made him look bad in an earlier hearing when she asked about laws governing men's bodies, but because Senator Feinstein is much older than he is (her being Jewish would be a factor today but probably not a couple of weeks ago) and Senator Harris is black/Indian, he attacked the younger white woman. He probably realized shortly after he attacked Klobuchar that going after any of the women was a bad idea, so he quickly apologized. He should have taken his anger out on one of the white men (which eliminates Booker) nearer his age (which eliminates Leahy).
Obviously, the people who should be the most civil are white men with power. In other words, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence should be the most civil people in America. But Trump and McConnell are old, and Trump is also insane. Should we excuse them because of those mitigating factors? Of course not. Just because I'm an old black woman doesn't mean I should curse and bully younger white people, especially if I expect them to treat me with respect. I think we old folks should be allowed to be a little crankier and more impatient than the younger ones, and we old black people should be allowed to be a little angrier than everyone else, except old Native Americans, but incivility is unacceptable, no matter how old we are, what our histories of oppression are, or what disabilities we may have.
The most uncivil person I saw this week was not Trump but a blind, elderly white woman who was seeking help at the Bank of America ATM. As I walked into the scene, she was blasting the bank employee, a fortyish Asian woman, who was trying to help her. I don't know how long the tense encounter had been going on when I arrived, but the Asian woman quietly left before I started my transaction. At that point, a civil, elderly white man who was just a bystander (he may have been walking by or had completed his bank business) let the blind woman know that the employee had left and offered to go into the bank to see if someone else was coming out to help her. The uncivil blind woman turned on him, yelling at him, asking why he couldn't help her, saying she had other things to do and didn't have time to wait. When I realized that my evil glare was not effective because the woman couldn't see it, I decided to mind my business. As I was leaving and the civil man, looking worried and sad, was entering the bank to search for help for the uncivil woman, I said quietly to him, "You are a very nice man." I was being unusually (for me) civil in that scene because my instinct was to loud talk the uncivil woman, to let her know that no one had to be nice to her just because she was blind, white, and a relatively old woman.
We can all learn a lesson from the elderly, civil white man and even from the elderly, less civil black woman in the Bank of America scene. During this uncivil time in our history, we all need to work on being more civil by treating everyone the way we would like to be treated, treating some people (the elderly, disabled, black and other oppressed people) even better than we would like to be treated, and (most difficult) resisting the urge to react uncivilly to incivility. When faced with incivility, we can do what the Asian woman did-- walk quietly away. Or we can do what I did--ignore the uncivil person and compliment/encourage the civil one. If we're extraordinarily civil (I'm not), we can do what the white man did--treat the uncivil person with kindness and civility.
