The powerless are rude
I’ve thought that for a while now. Rudeness doesn’t come from a place of strength. A person who feels empowered to affect their environment doesn’t need to be rude. Maybe they still will be, but the rudeness of the powerful is more likely to be thoughtlessness; they are too oriented to their own goals to pay enough attention to others.
Active rudeness, though, comes from the powerless. It’s their way of shoving back against a world that shoves them around every day. It’s why the voices of the poor are louder than the voices of the rich. It’s why the wealthy go to symphony and the poor blast Eminem. FUCK YOU. I AM HERE AND YOU WILL NOT IGNORE ME. Those who feel powerful don’t need to make that assertion. Of course they won’t be ignored. Their hourly rates or their books or the message that their groomed and well-clad bodies send ensure that.
To be courteous you have to feel strong. You have to believe that your words and actions affect others. (Remember the brilliant “30 Rock” when Liz goes to her high-school reunion, only to discover that the popular girls had actually been terrified of her and her sharp tongue? She’d assumed nothing her dorky self would say could have ever hurt them.) You have to believe that you have agency, that you can act, not merely react to circumstances. You have to believe that you have other ways of getting status and attention — which we all need — besides impinging on the physical or psychological space of others.
I’ve been thinking about that for a long time, and this article on Salon, about an unemployed man’s little compensatory ritual of rudeness, spurred me to put it into words.
A Facebook friend of mine recently posted the following quote by Anna Deavere Smith: “Grace is in how we treat each other when we could choose to exert power and we find another way.” I don’t know the context, so I don’t know if I agree with the statement or not, but I think it’s a lot easier to be graceful when you have access to legitimate avenues of power.
People who don’t get listened to start to scream.
People who aren’t given enough space start to push.
People who get cut out of the main action will start their own. And you may not like it.
What are your thoughts?
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (10)
10 Responses to “The powerless are rude”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe
I think this is a really interesting post. I don’t think this is all there is to it, though. I do think that those who aren’t given enough space start to push back. But at the same time, I think that demanding what you deserve has to be taught, and it is more likely to be taught to the rich than to the poor. I think, for example, that a rich person is more likely to grill a doctor about a diagnosis and be really pushy about it than a poor person.
Not sure where privilege intersects with the impulse to grab back power through rudeness.
I’m loving this post. I’d never really thought of it this way before but it makes so much sense. It’s something good to keep in mind when you feel the urge to be rude and also when someone else is rude towards you. This actually helps me when I think about dealing with some people in my life who I often find acting rude or angry when it’s unnecessary. It’s good to find a framework for where they’re coming from to help with how I then react to them. thanks!
I agree to an extent. I notice I am at my rudest when I’m frustrated and/or feeling like things are getting out of my control. Like when I get transferred for the third time after I finally get through to a person at the health insurance company…
But, I think those in power can be rude in a rather passive way. I’ve been on the receiving end of massive senses of entitlement and condescension working as a clerk, and they don’t usually come from “disadvantaged” people. They came from people with privilege who expected to get their way as a matter of course. I don’t know; isn’t acting on that expectation rude?
Thank you for this provocative post.
I agree that rudeness comes from a place of lack. But I’m not sure that what’s missing is true power — the kind of “power” you’re referring to is probably more accurately called “entitlement” or “privilege,” I think. Whatever its name, it has a whole different set of issues associated with it, and many of them are unattractive.
While it’s often perceived as a lack of power, what I guess is really going on for people like the man in the Salon story is that they don’t feel valued. They don’t feel seen. They don’t feel loved. So they do what little children do when they feel this way — they have a tantrum. And they get seen, but for all the wrong reasons.
Here’s a challenge (and believe me, I know I’m asking a lot here) for all of us to whom civility matters. When someone is being rude, envision them surrounded by love — your love. Don’t glare, or mutter, or react in any way. They’ll notice that they’re not getting the reaction they expected. It will make them stop and wonder. And if enough of us could do this, it would make a real difference.
I don’t disagree with this analysis – I think you’ve hit on something important – but I don’t agree that those in power are less likely to be rude than those who are not. The motivation may be quite different, but rudeness is absolutely not a phenomenon of the lower socio-economic classes, or even more common amongst them. I grew up among the powerful, and I have spent part of my career working closely with people of considerable wealth and power, so I feel more than qualified to make sweeping generalizations like this one: the powerful are just as likely to be rude as the powerless, but their rudeness is qualitatively different. And I think that difference is very much related to the dynamics you’re describing.
What I really want to comment on, though, is this little thrown-away line in the midst of your argument: “I don’t know the context, so I don’t know if I agree with the statement or not…” What a lovely, rational, intelligent reaction to a sound bite. It just made me so happy to read.
Clare and MelissaJane both made the point that came into my mind when reading this – lack of power is only one impetus for rudeness. Many people who feel superior to others are also rude (those who yap incessantly into their cellphone during a transaction in a store, those who are rude to waitstaff/cashiers/other service providers, people who cut lines, etc). I wonder if what it really all boils down to is being self-centered – I don’t think I’m getting what I deserve (whether it’s being listened to, proper deference, or whatever), so I will assert myself in a manner that everyone knows how important I am.
“the rudeness of the powerful is more likely to be thoughtlessness; they are too oriented to their own goals to pay enough attention to others”
Oh, yeah. Nail on the head. And sometimes the thoughtlessness leads to such awful results that they couldn’t have done worse if they’d done it on purpose.
Maybe if highly privileged people weren’t so cluelessly self-absorbed, others wouldn’t have to be so rude in order to be seen and heard and granted crumbs of access to power.
I immediately thought of road rage: unless one is willing to do something both exremely rude (particularly in the “look at me NOW” sense) and probably dangerous, one is completely powerless when someone else does something idiotic on the road.
But I also want to respond to Clare’s comment about entitlement and condescension encountered by a clerk. In that situation, such as in a store, I think that the clerk is the powerful one: it the clerk who makes it possible or impossible for the customer to complete the transaction, purchase the desired item, and leave with it. For someone who is used to being able to do things like that him- or herself, that can be enormously frustrating, particularly because the customer may perceive him- or herself as being able to complete the transaction just as well as the clerk.
That Salon article seriously irritated me. There’s enough bad stuff going on in the world already. Why go out of your way to annoy and bother other people? It just seems so mean-spirited.
I’ve seen powerful people be extremely rude. Their sense of their own entitlement overpowers any realization that they should be wary of other people and their feelings. They’re rude because they just don’t care.
I don’t disagree with the assessment of rudeness and powerlessness, but I disagree about the rudeness of rich/powerful people. I think it’s usually not thoughtlessness, it’s more of “you are insignificant compared to me” i.e. a place of superiority.