“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.”
–Felix Frankfurter
A couple of days ago, as I was walking through the market near my office, I passed a beaming, benevolent white street preacher who looked a little like Santa Claus. He spoke in a booming, sing-song voice about kindness, forgiveness, and morality.
Normally I would have passed right by but I paused when he started to talk about the recent news reports of a website that teaches men how to assault unconscious women. Surely such a kind, moral man would be outraged by something like that? Well, kinda.
“It is a tragedy that should not be allowed to “poison the most sacred relationships. Women,” he said, “need to let things go. This is a time for softness. We all need to be nice.”
Oh really.
That’s the important thing. Let it go. “Be nice.” Don’t fixate on dumb ideas like injustice and dehumanization.
Where did we get the idea that it’s more important to keep people comfortable than it is to seek justice? Equality doesn’t come into it as long as we’re polite. We’re not trained to identify injustice, we’re conditioned to focus on the anger of the other person. If they’re too angry, that alone is enough to dismiss what they’re saying.
You can read about it in the news pretty much every day. But then, at the same time, the root causes of anger are hardly ever discussed. Inequality is rarely mentioned in any of the pop psych “marriage guides” out there, which take systemic problems and then present them back as individual “challenges.”
The advice focusses on being nice by learning to avoid criticism, use non-confrontational language, have a positive attitude, and of course, never blame or complain. Those are all good things, of course, but they don’t replace equality or even basic fairness.
It’s also interesting to consider whose niceness is expected and whose is rewarded. People at the top of a hierarchy are lauded for good behaviour, but it’s not optional for those farther down the ladder. They’re expected to couch their emotions and keep the higher-ups comfortable, to raise issues in just the right way or risk being dismissed.
We see this when immigrants and refugees are expected to be grateful, when people are told they are lucky to have the opportunity to work for free in order to get experience, and when rich capitalists are celebrated for donations to causes that wouldn’t exist in more equitable systems. It’s on full display in customer service industries, where minimum wage workers are supposed to smile and be calm even in the face of rudeness and abuse from customers.
It’s also visible in discussions of the “male loneliness epidemic,” which often call on women to take steps to help men deal with their problems, without addressing the ways patriarchy causes those issues. Sure, men should be nicer to women, but those women had better reward their efforts, rather than calling for an end to the system that makes life so hard for all genders.
The hard truth is that someone can be nice and still benefit from deep andy systemic unfairness. A manager might treat staff with kindness and create a great sense of team spirit while exploiting the team’s enthusiasm by paying them less than they’re worth. A man might be gentle with his partner while failing to notice how he benefits from all the extra time and energy she devotes to keeping the family’s life on track.
If we want things to change, maybe it’s niceness that needs to go.