On Being Nice...and Oppressive

Definitely been guilty of this. And I should know better, as much as I hate when it's done to me:


::Ellen says something I find funny, and I think to myself, That is so funny, and then, without my necessarily recognizing it, I say to myself Ellen is so funny. Notice how my initial experience (that I was amused) turns into something about her (now she is funny).

It may seem odd to you that we're urging you not to make statements of this sort: "Carlos, I just want you to know how much I appreciate how generous you are" (or: "what a good sense of humor you have" or "that you always know the right thing to say"), or "Alice, you are so patient" (or, "so prompt," or "so never-say-die," "always there when you are needed"), and so on...These seem like such nice things to say to someone. What could possibly be the problem with saying them?

The problem we see is this: the person, inevitably and quite properly, relates what you say to how she knows herself to be. You can tell Carlos he is generous, but he knows how generous he actually is. You can tell Alice she is very patient, but she knows her side of how patient she is being with you.

If we characterize people, even if we do so quite positively, we actually engage-however unintentionally-in the rather presumptuous activity of entitling ourselves to say who and how the other is. We entitle ourselves to confer upon people the sources of their worthiness. We say, "This is the shape of the person," or if we are direct, "This is your shape." We dress the person in a suit of psychological clothes. As much as they might appreciate the fancy quality of the cloth, they are likely to feel, "Well, it doesn't exactly fit. You need to let out a bit here, take in a lot there."::

Emphasis mine.

This is from a reading I have to do for class at Hunter College, which started today. From a book: How The Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work by Robert Kogan and Lisa Laklow

Wow. What a presumptuous bitch I can be sometimes...what an oppressive way to walk around in the world while remaining under the guise of "niceness"...it makes me want to read the book. Shit. Navigating interpersonal relationships is so tricky in this world. This is what I like about class and school, sometimes...sometimes when you're given the right language to illuminate why certain things are the way they are, or how other things should be different...your whole world kinda shifts a little to the left. (Random song interlude:: "to the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left..." Resume.) Even if you had some vague notion before about why some shit just ain't right...finding the language to place it in context is really a powerful thing.