Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility

Zamalin (Antiracism: An Introduction), director of the African American Studies Program at the University of Detroit Mercy, argues in this brisk and provocative treatise that “civility is the central term through which racial inequality has been maintained” in America. According to Zamalin, pundits and politicians who view civility as the most effective means of opposing President Trump are echoing the language of “slaveholders, segregationists, lynch mobs, and eugenicists.” Zamalin notes that proslavery politicians described the debate over slavery as a “lovers’ quarrel between a hostile, hateful North and a genteel South,” examines how conservatives in the 1970s and ’80s justified severe cuts to welfare programs by drawing public attention to “uncivil black citizens” like “welfare queen” Linda Taylor, and discusses how George W. Bush evoked “compassionate conservatism” to facilitate the gentrification of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Zamalin’s alternative to civility is “civic radicalism,” a somewhat amorphous concept of disruption and resistance that he locates in the activism of Martin Luther King Jr., radical abolitionist John Brown, poet Audre Lorde, and the Black Lives Matter movement, among others. Progressives will be galvanized by this urgent and incisive call for a stiffer resistance to the status quo. (Feb.)