MANNERS: THE LUBRICATION OF A CIVILIZED SOCIETY

I sat back expectantly Sunday afternoon to watch the replay of the Munk Debate (video above) with Michael Eric Dyson, Michelle Goldberg, Jordan Peterson and Stephen Fry. The proposed topic of debate was whether or not political correctness is good. Dyson-Goldberg were the pro team. Peterson-Fry the cons. 

The debate descended into a convoluted discussion of political theory by Peterson and Goldberg primarily. Dyson reverted to Bible-thumping rap style in pulpit tones. Stephen Fry repeatedly tried to drag the various air balloons on stage back to the debate topic: Political correctness. 

A notable thread in the event was the race-baiting and outright racist insults of Mr. Dyson directed at Jordan Peterson. I will not repeat the unworthy comments. I will, however, say that a man with a doctorate and a post at a respected Jesuit university, Georgetown, was not evident in Mr. Dyson's on-stage behavior. He would most likely call me a racist because of this observation, since his vision appears to be limited to Black-vs-White, despite his rather deceptive corrective lenses. 

Stephen Fry's Cantabridgian sophistication and practiced humility of voiced skepticism and healthy self-doubt, when absolutes cross his mind, overshadowed the other participants. His imposing stature, magnified in white suit, reassured instead of threatened. His manner is part diffidence and part slyness. His sidelong glances when delivering a stabbing intellectual thrust are deceptively virginal. 

The power of Mr. Fry in these situations is based in his impeccable mastery of English aristocratic manners. In this debate, his manners and mannerisms prevented the occasion from becoming an academic melee with no cohesion or polish.

Our age is plagued by mass media which try to force rudeness and ready outrage upon us. Mr. Dyson, for example, is a defender of Black gangster rap as a valid expression of Black resistance to perceived oppression by slaver Whites. Yet Blacks kill Black people in this country at a rate roughly 12 times the rate of Blacks killed by Whites in the U.S.. And White slavers are fewer in the world today than Black enslavers of Blacks in Africa. This simply means that gangster rap is neither civilized nor informed in its racist rage against less murderous Whites. Mr. Dyson would call that remark racist, I speculate, but his world view is polluted beyond his ability to maintain a courteous discussion of it. So be it.

Manners, not hypocritical political correctness, lubricate a civilized society. Good manners, integrated into a civilized person's routine behavior,  are designed to portray universal respect for all people in society. Good manners can be acquired without money or social status. Good manners have no color, though Mr. Dyson might well see them as tools of White oppression. They can be practiced in any language with or without an accent. 

Mr. Dyson's display of unrepentant bad manners in the Munk Debate undermined his position considerably. It also added an unhelpful grit of anger to the proceedings. What could be ruder than calling a comparative stranger "an angry White man" during a public debate about political correctness? Mr. Dyson also accused all White people of demeaning Martin Luther King when he was alive because he was Black. This was insulting to an entire generation (mine) of White Americans who were inspired by and supportive of Dr. King's mission. 

I do not know where Mr. Dyson's entitlement to be so rude comes from. However, I am close to being his peer in age. I came from a working-class White background where rudeness abounded certainly, but education by parents and teachers exposed me to a better way. I know from living in poorer African-American neighborhoods more than once in my adulthood that rudeness is not the norm there in public discourse. Quite the opposite. Some of the most courteous and gracious people I have ever met have been Black women and especially Black elders of various economic classes. Perhaps Mr. Dyson would rudely call these lovely people Uncle Toms or worse. 

As evidenced in the roughness of the early Black Lives Matter movement, segments of all social groups are uneducated and rude, even when legitimately trying to right social wrongs. It is the difference between riot and protest. It is the difference between shouting down and discourse. However, it should never be excusable in a professor with a PhD. 

Good manners have never failed me. I have been in the company of social elites who have judged me de classe on sight because of some external markers, but I managed through good manners to navigate those circles without conflict or alienation. And, I have been abrasively confronted by some who saw me as an elitist or privileged based on my skin color. Good manners on my part allowed me to enter into dialogue and challenge those assumptions without uncivilized conflict. 

The best manners require an ability to access personal humility and good humor in the face of the absence of both. Stephen Fry is a shining example of the best of good manners under stress. And the positive  response he inevitably receives stands as proof of the effectiveness of those good manners.