Publishers Weekly
11/09/2020
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.)
From the Publisher
Progressives will be galvanized by this urgent and incisive call for a stiffer resistance to the status quo.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An impassioned argument for public acts of resistance.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility is an amazing book and quickly provides an eye-opening view into why white calling for people to act ‘civil’ has racial undertones. In a mere 136 pages, we are treated to a rich and detailed history lesson in the use of this civility from George Washington to George Floyd.”
—San Francisco Book Review
“Narrator Adam Barr uses a persuasive style to emphasize the core message of this audiobook, which is that calls for civility actually fuel racism, rather than combat it. . . . Barr is an excellent choice for a title that is likely to cause debate—even controversy.”
—AudioFile Magazine
"Zamalin's brief and blunt critique of failures and successes in the struggle for human rights in the United States calls to readers who care about racial and social justice to commit to a progressive, multiracial democratic movement to fight oppression, end discrimination, and extend economic freedom. Critical reading."
—Library Journal
“Monumental . . . A must-read book to help us conceptualize liberation for a well-functioning multiracial democracy.”
—Dorian Warren, president of Community Change
“Zamalin’s Against Civility offers an insightful, cogent analysis of democracy’s racism and decay with scholarship that emphasizes the collective struggle for justice through civic radicalism. Writing against pleasantries that gloss over pandemics of violence and disposability, Zamalin charts the historical, political, and spiritual trajectories of civic radicalism to counter repression. This is vital reading.”
—Joy James, author of Seeking the “Beloved Community”
“How could anything be more appropriate to today’s audacious struggles than this brilliant unmasking of the polite rhetoric of oppression? Zamalin topples a lot of hypocritical statuary.”
—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
“At a time of national debate about the history and ongoing reality of American racism, Alex Zamalin reminds us of an important truth: while politeness may be a virtue, speaking out against injustice is the more overriding imperative. This short but powerful book, vigorously and vividly written, is both a capsule account of a long struggle for racial equality too often erased in mainstream narratives and an inspirational call for a new multiracial democracy.”
—Charles W. Mills, author of The Racial Contract
“From opponents of abolitionism in the nineteenth century to BLM counter-protesters in the twenty-first, Zamalin shows how it has often been an insistence on ‘civility’ that ironically justifies and unleashes the gnashing dogs of the Right’s anti-democratic agenda. Who would ever be wary of something as benevolent sounding as ‘civility’? Turns out, we should all be.”
—Matthew Frye Jacobson, author of Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race
“Against Civility powerfully reveals how civil discourse has been weaponized throughout history to undermine antiracism, bolster white supremacy, and oppress marginalized people. Zamalin’s timely call for civic radicalism inspires and educates us all with the stories of freedom fighters, artists, scholars, and activists who disregarded respectability politics to mobilize for human rights and freedoms. Essential reading.”
—Crystal Marie Fleming, PhD, author of How to Be Less Stupid About Race
“Zamalin writes a compelling story of the use and abuse of ‘civility’ and ‘reconciliation’ rhetoric across the broad sweep of US history. From slaveholders like John C. Calhoun to contemporary right-wing politicians like Donald Trump, elite whites figure prominently in this narrative. Whites’ civility framing routinely normalizes white supremacist and other anti-democratic activists but negatively frames black anti-racist protesters by insisting that the latter, who are actually seeking real democracy, are somehow ‘uncivilized.’”
—Joe Feagin, Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University and author of The White Racial Frame
“Over the past several years, ‘civility’ has become a keyword of sorts, used as a cudgel to promote the idea that respectful dialogue offers the best way through this moment. Against Civility is a refreshing tonic that urges otherwise.”
—Lester Spence, professor of political science and Africana studies, Johns Hopkins
Library Journal
12/01/2020
Civility has no role in the fight to gain freedom for the marginalized, declares Zamalin (African American studies; Univ. of Detroit Mercy; Antiracism: An Introduction). Politeness simply will not do in the centuries-old culture wars against white supremacy and exploitation in America. Civility is a distraction and leads to hiding or keeping private; it has never advanced equity; rather, civility has served as a mask and muzzle, acting as an instrument of coercion, pushing politeness to displace justice, he argues. Only civic radicalism committed to speaking truth to power and mobilizing to use every means at hand to persistently attack structural inequality has effectively countered reactionary policies and practices, Zamalin insists. To demonstrate his point, he arrays radical leaders who chose to be disruptive as they articulated democratic ideas of social equality, unconditional freedom, and liberation for all while also engaging in fearless direct action in order to mobilize, organize, provoke, and unsettle. VERDICT Zamalin's brief and blunt critique of failures and successes in the struggle for human rights in the United States calls to readers who care about racial and social justice to commit to a progressive, multiracial democratic movement to fight oppression, end discrimination, and extend economic freedom. Critical reading.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
Kirkus Reviews
2020-12-08
A political scientist calls for disruptive protests to combat racism.
The director of the African-American Studies Program at the University of Detroit, Mercy, Zamalin shows how, throughout U.S. history, calls for civility have been “a tool for silencing dissent, repressing political participation, enforcing economic inequality, and justifying violence upon people of color.” Most recently, he points out, civility has been invoked as a way to combat the divisiveness incited by the Trump administration, but Zamalin asserts that civility in everyday life is different from civility in the political “arena of power and struggle.” He advocates disruptive direct action—what he calls “civic radicalism”—that has as its goal “liberation for all, regardless of who disagrees.” Offering a vivid, though generally familiar, history of racism in the U.S., the author contrasts those who promoted civility with those who urged public protests: Booker T. Washington, for example, against Frederick Douglass. Douglass, Zamalin writes, “saw misuse of power, division, contestation, deceit, and hypocrisy everywhere he looked. But Washington saw the unachieved promise of racial reconciliation, forgiveness, generosity, and compromise” and therefore urged Blacks to keep their place—advice that racists welcomed. Racial reconciliation, Zamalin cautions, “is something of which we must be wary. This is because it can sidestep collective responsibility and instead become about confessing individual guilt, which is no recipe for changing history. Guilt is a depressive emotion that makes one withdraw rather than take action.” Martin Luther King Jr. saw as his greatest adversary not the Ku Klux Klan “but the white moderate basking in civility, the rules of which dictated compromise and mutual respect.” Zamalin is heartened by recent street protests over racism, inequality, and police brutality, noting that media coverage focusing on the protesters’ violence recalls “the civil versus uncivil distinctions elites have always used to interpret popular anti-racist uprisings throughout history.”
An impassioned argument for public acts of resistance.
