Civility functions as a form of class rule by privatizing social order

Evidence

Civility in this generalized sense amounts to the texture of sociality, the fabric (and fabricated) of the lived, sometimes frayed and sometimes fine, the latter too often tied, if only by negation, to the former. I would say even that civility emerged and has operated as a form of class rule, its privatization. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 232

Civil society accordingly consists of the technologies and informed substance of associations, rules, and regulations of, even resistances to, such conflict and violence management, of lived sociality and social life. It follows that civility is their style, the aesthetics of this set of conditions and relations. Civility in this generalized sense amounts to the texture of sociality, the fabric (and fabricated) of the lived, sometimes frayed and sometimes fine, the latter too often tied, if only by negation, to the former. I would say even that civility emerged and has operated as a form of class rule, its privatization. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 232

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Norbert Elias’s ‘civilizing process’ critique and to the reader’s own interest in codes of dress and conduct as class markers (see ‘Complaints About Immodesty’). — connects to: Bourgeois civil society rests on the choice between deceit or failure; Bourgeois tolerance functions as a mask preserving the status quo — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 342; Classroom decorum rules covertly enforce bourgeois values on working-class students — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 353 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Offers a distinctive, sharply politicized definition of civility as class rule’s privatized form.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 232