WHEN IS A PERSON NOT A PERSON

In any culture there are permissible moments when the mask may slip. Blacks in the South are well aware of the 'hate stare' that a Southern white can give to them for no obvious reason except skin colour. The same stare or naked show of hostility without masking can be given to another white by a white only under the greatest provocation and it is never permitted in America's Southern cultures to be given by a black to a white. One of the reasons why the mask may be dropped, in this case, by the Southern white is because the Southern white sees the black as a non-person, an object not worth concerning himself about. In the South, however, the blacks have their own private signs. One black, by a certain signal of the eye, may tell another that he, too, is a brother, a black, even though his skin is so light that he could pass as a white. By another type of eye signal he may warn off a black and tell him, ' I am passing as a white man.'

Children, in our society, are treated as non-persons quite often and so are servants. We feel, perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously, that before these nonpersons no mask is necessary. We cannot worry about hurting the feelings of a non-person. How can he have feelings to hurt? This attitude is usually seen as a class-oriented thing. A class in society will apply it to the class beneath; higher status people will apply it to lower-status people. The boss may not bother to mask in front of his employee, nor the lady in front of her maid any more than a father will mask in front of his child. I sat in a restaurant recently with my wife, and a table away two dowager-type women were having cocktails. Everything about them from their furs to their hairdos cried out 'wealth' and their bearing confirmed the fact. In the crowded restaurant they talked in voices so loud that they carried to every corner, yet their talk was private and intimate. The embarrassing result to the rest of the diners was that in order to maintain an illusion of privacy we all had either to pretend not to hear or to conduct ourselves and our own conversations so intently that we could block out the two dowagers.

In body language these two women were saying,' You are all of no real importance to us. You are all, in fact, not really people at all. You are non-persons. What we wish to do is all that matters, and so we cannot really embarrass anyone else.' Incidentally, instead of using their bodies to signal this message, these dowagers used voice volume, and it was not the intelligence of what they said but the amount of sound they used to say it that conveyed the message. Here we have the unusual technique of having two messages transmitted by one medium, the meaning of the words transmits one message, and the loudness of the voice transmits another.

There are cases where the mask is dropped but the dropping is almost contemptuous. Unmasking in front of a non-person is often no unmasking at all. In most cases we keep our masks on and the reason we keep them on is important. It is often dangerous in one way or another to unmask. When we are approached by a beggar in the street, if we do not wish to give him anything, it is important that we pretend he is not there and we have not seen him. We firm up the mask, look away and hurry past. If we were to allow ourselves to unmask in order to see the beggar as an individual, not only would we have to face our own consciences, but we would also leave ourselves open to his importuning, pleading and possible attempt to embarrass us. The same is true of many chance encounters. We cannot afford the time involved to exchange words and pleasantries, at least in urban areas. There are just too many people around us. In the suburbs or in the country it is different, and there is correspondingly less masking. Also, by showing our real selves, we open ourselves to unpleasant interpretation. Dr Goffman makes this clear in the setting of a mental institution. He describes a middle-aged man, a mental patient, who walked about with a folded newspaper and a rolled umbrella, wearing an expression of being late for an appointment. Keeping up the front that he was a normal businessman was overwhelmingly important to this patient, though in point of

fact he was deceiving no one but himself. In Eastern countries the masking procedure may be a physical one. The custom of women wearing veils is primarily to allow them to conceal their true emotions and so protect them from any male aggression. In these countries body language is so well recognized that it becomes an accepted fact that a man, with the slightest encouragement, will try to force sexual intercourse upon a woman. The veil allows the woman to hide her lower face and any unintentionally encouraging gesture. In the seventeenth century women used fans and masks on sticks for the same purpose.