Civility and Fresno State’s ‘Principles of Community’ should be scrapped

At the end of December, The Fresno Bee reported that Fresno State was working on a document laying out expectations for employee conduct toward each other, which they call “Principles of Community.” Its authors claim the purpose of the document is to make sure “people are nice to each other.” As a faculty member who has had some interaction with the leadership of this university, including the authors of that document, I doubt it is as innocuous as its primary-school diction suggests.

It is not an accident that the effort to draft this document began in 2017. Many people in this country sharply criticized the fascist turn initiated by Trump. Policies driven by a coherent world-view that sorts humanity into aggregates hierarchically ordered and assigned a declining worth, the less white, male, and Christian; and employed with systematic and deliberate sadism in the treatment of the weakest members of society, like refugees and undocumented immigrants, elicited clear and principled opposition.

This opposition, in turn, drew out two backlashes, both of them repressive:

The first was the direct action of the far right, the targeted harrassment, death threats, and public vilification of critics which came to a crescendo in the treatment of Christine Ford. Fresno State leadership supported this type of targeted harassment against their own faculty on three occasions, at least.

The other was the civility police. These are people who claim to want to maintain kindness, respect, mutual understanding, peace, love, and puppies, in spite of all that. Yes, racist thugs with badges are targeting children for mistreatment (arresting parents under the eyes of a child they just dropped off at school, placing children in cages, and stealing infants to hand them to foster parents, for example). But please, if you raise your voice in criticizing that, you are no better than those who are implementing and enforcing these inhumane policies.

The civility police is at work in these “Principles of Community.”

Civility has a long and nefarious history. Consider the American South, under slavery and Jim Crow, where politeness was developed into an art form while racial violence and inequality shaped daily life. Civility was not accidentally thriving side by side with oppression, but systematically. An African-American who reacted politely to any imposition signaled compliance with the underlying regime of injustice. The “uppity” black person, on the other hand, indicated a willingness to challenge that regime. Civility is the first line of defence of a social order built on violence, inequality, and injustice.

It is a gendered concept, as well, in that a crucial boundary set up by racial laws and upheld by conventions was the prohibition on interracial romantic relations. That lynching was the logical corollary of civility becomes clear when we consider that many victims of lynching were accused of direspecting white women. For that reason, white women played a special role in upholding civility, and thereby cementing the unjust racial order.

Since the Republican Party is now engaged in the creation of such a social order, civility is again so strongly in vogue. By enforcing civility against the sharp critics, the coward who prefers harmony to conflict at all cost can tell himself he is at least doing some good.

Democrats who joined the condemnation of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who called the Republican leader an expletive, may kid themselves into thinking that they are upholding a positive good. In fact, to demand “respect for authority” while heaping disdain and abuse on the powerless is a clear symptom of authoritarianism. The more often the powerful are insulted, the healthier a democracy.

Consider, for a contrast, the debate culture in the British House of Commons, where a good insult is valued as an accomplishment. In Germany, too, harsh and clear but honest criticism is valued; whereas guarded, polite disagreement is recognized as a sign of cowardice and dishonesty. In such comparison, the culturally contingent character of the civility police is most evident.

Martin Luther, the great religious reformer, created the modern German language when he translated the Bible. By virtue of that deed, and by his personal example, he single-handedly established the standard for the professional class of educated citizens (Bildungsbürger). Luther cultivated the insult to such a degree, that there exists a website called the Lutheran Insult Generator. If you call up that website, you can go a long time before you encounter the same insult, twice. There is an endless font.

This is my national tradition. For Fresno State to tell me that white, Anglo, middle-class sensibilities somehow establish an eternal standard of professional conduct is an example of ethnocentric arrogance filtered through the pretensions of social class to yield a toxic sweet brew; the hemlock cocktail of civility you would offer anyone who dares to rock the boat.

American public discourse knows examples of polemicists who are still held in high regard. Consider Mark Twain, or H. L. Mencken, for examples. They should serve as models for our current age. If we can get to a point where nobody will say “I am offended,” and mistake that statement for an argument, this country will be better off. And if the oft-bemoaned “coarsening of public discourse” attributed to the Republican Führer can contribute to that, so much the better.

Policing tone and attitude does not just infantilize public discourse; it reinforces the authoritarianism already threatening democracy and constitutional rule across the board. Fresno State should scrap the “Principles of Community.”

This story was originally published January 17, 2019 at 11:19 AM.