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Revision essay: Omelas

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Vivian O’Bannon

Jody Cohen

Emily Balch Seminar: Changing Our Story

December 13, 2016

Politeness: Lack of Inclusion Does Not Mean Exclusion

Politeness is defined as “behavior that is respectful and considerate of other people”.  The culture surrounding politeness and political correctness at Bryn Mawr College stems from an overwhelming presence of liberalism.  This politeness is actually damaging and prevents people from actually making mistakes, which prevents them from improving.  People won’t be prepared for the real world if they expect this culture of politeness from everyone, and they won’t be ready for the hardships awaiting them outside of college.  At Bryn Mawr, the politeness mainly centers on inclusion.  Bryn Mawr students and faculty attempt to include every single person, although that is impossible.  There is no way to satisfy every single person, because someone will always be offended, disagree, or feel excluded.  The extent to which Bryn Mawr pushes for inclusion is damaging and a waste of energy, because in the end, not every need can be met.  Ursula LeGuin presents this idea of politeness hyperbolically through her short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

The beginning of LeGuin’s novel describes a town in which everyone is happy.  Everyone prospers, no one suffers.  No one hurts anyone else, everyone spreads love.  However, for this dynamic to work, the people of Omelas accept the perpetual sufferance of one innocent child.  They understand that one person will suffer in exchange for the happiness of all; if that child did not suffer, the rest of Omelas would, so the townspeople understand that the exchange is necessary.  The culture of politeness aims for inclusion and happiness of all; Omelas presents the opposing reality.  As an entire city nears perfection, as all evil disappears, the sufferance of one group will continue to worsen until the actual function of the city relies on this imbalance.  However, there were people who walked away from Omelas, as implied by the title.  These people would sacrifice living in a perfect city with a perfect life, without war or conflict, without hatred, because they know that all of this perfection is based on something false.  The people who stay in Omelas believe that their city is perfect, even though they know about the imbalance.  They feel that happiness should be measured on a societal level, rather than on an individual level; that the town’s overall happiness is more important than one individual’s happiness; the perfection of a city is worth the terrible unjust suffering of an innocent child.

The people who walk away do not measure happiness on a large scale; they take a more humanist approach.  LeGuin’s extreme story presents a formula for happiness; as everyone else begins to thrive more, one person suffers more.  Her story shows the end point, that one side has reached absolute perfection, and the other side has reached absolute pain.  Using this formula, one can justify the destructive force behind “politeness”.  As one tries to respect and consider all people, someone will be excluded, and there is no way to avoid that.  At Bryn Mawr’s THRIVE lecture about inclusion, one student made a comment about the LGBTQ+ groups on campus.  They wanted a group that does not include the term “queer”, because this is an offensive word for them as someone who identifies as lesbian.  This scenario exemplifies the issue of politeness at Bryn Mawr.  If the LGBTQ+ groups on campus excluded the Q to be “polite” and accommodate the sensitivity of certain people, an entire group would be excluded from the support groups made for their specific sexual identity.  In order to make some people feel comfortable and unoffended, an entire group loses support, and loses the power of claiming their sexual identity openly.  Vice versa, if the offensive term remained, one group would feel offended and would not feel comfortable joining the support group because they oppose the use of that slur as a sexual identifier.  By pushing for a culture that includes everyone, Bryn Mawr increases the risk of making someone feel more excluded.  Not only is it impossible to make everyone happy, but it is dangerous to function on a group level instead of an individual level.  Instead of trying to making a very large group that includes as many people as possible, it would make the most sense to function individually, and to try to accept that some things won’t apply to everyone.

To the person who feels offended by the term queer, understand that just because something offends you does not mean it is meant to offend you.  People can feel offended by something without feeling attacked or excluded; the culture of politeness at Bryn Mawr does not function like that.  It focuses too much on not offending people, instead of reminding people that they are not being purposefully attacked or offended.  Instead of making such an effort to stop offending others, Bryn Mawr students can make an effort to accept when we are offended, and to determine whether or not the offense is purposeful and malicious.  If it is not purposeful or malicious, one can determine that the offense is subjective (not objective), and can be dealt with introspectively.  To the person who wants to remove the term queer: instead of excluding an entire sexual minority from their support group, why don’t you ask yourself, “why am I so offended by someone else’s identity?”  If you openly identify as lesbian, not queer, why would you be offended?  If the term is not being used in an offensive way, and it does not apply to you, why go about excluding this group?  If the use of the word queer is not meant to offend you - if it is not meant to be a slur, or to oppose any group - then the offense is your problem, not anyone else’s.

This is where politeness and political correctness are misunderstood.  Politeness should not mean including everyone, it should not mean pleasing every single person.  It should mean learning when comments are purposefully offensive, or when comments are malicious.  It means understanding that not everyone can be included in everything.  For example, trans people are not being excluded by Bryn Mawr’s honor code just because it uses she/her pronouns.  Lack of inclusion does not mean exclusion, or offense, and too many people think otherwise because of this culture of politeness and political correctness.  To truly be polite, people can function on an individual level and try not to make malicious or offensive comments to the people around them.  To be polite, people can try to realize when someone does not mean to offend them, to forgive the mistake, to accept when someone “slips”.  “Slipping”, a term coined by Emily Elstad, encompasses the subtle (and not so subtle) mistakes that happen every day, ones that reach from blatantly racist acts to ignorantly insensitive comments to mildly rude jokes.  To truly be polite, someone can recognize that a slip-up is not impolite.  Slipping does not damage the culture of politeness, but malicious comments do.  What damages the culture of politeness is the eagerness to be offended, to villainize people who make mistakes, even the people who do not know any better.  But slipping is not malicious, and it is a learning experience that furthers the inclusive culture of teaching, learning, and subsequently, understanding.