uppity people are posers

My grandmother used the word “uppity” to describe people in town who acted like they were better than everyone else. Although she was one of the handful of people in her small southern town with reason to act uppity—educated, politically influential, altruistic, the mayor’s wife—my grandmother was not uppity. My grandmother was a forthright woman, gracious and intelligent, not given to judgment. She rarely said an unkind word, so when she said someone was uppity, they were.

Uppity is an attitude of haughtiness carried by people who think better of themselves than they ought. They don’t know they’re uppity. They’re inobservant, heedless, unaware of how they affect others with their attitudes because they don’t notice or think deeply about others. To many such people, others are not persons, but objects.

Uppity people seem to think mostly of themselves, about how everything affects them. Disinterested people are as obvious to us as are those who are thoughtful and interested in others.

If uppity people think about others at all, it’s with the pathos of one pretending to be compassionate. Real compassion is willing to get dirty, to expose itself to the muck and malaise of others—Mother Theresa living among lepers comes to mind. Uppity people don’t do real compassion, but like to appear to be compassionate. They’re likely to reserve space in their lives for an authentically compassionate, giving friend or acquaintance or two so that they can brag about said friends and thus, by association, feel philanthropical themselves.

They’re posers.

Uppity people are braggarts

In the dictionary definition of “uppity,” it says that to be uppity is to be “rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.” A tractable person is malleable, able to be worked with and shaped, willing to yield. A tractable person is a humble person.

It follows, then, that the uppity person is a proud person. The proud are neither malleable nor humble. They think they’re right about everything. People who are right don’t need others to agree with them, or perhaps to even need others at all–fine points often missed.

The uppity can’t seem to cherish their superiority privately. They’re compelled to share it in every way. They talk uppity. They act uppity. They leave no doubt in your mind as to just how remarkable they are.

The uppity people in my life don’t consider themselves uppity. To the contrary, they pride themselves on their humility and willingness to appear to be malleable.

Yes, they pride themselves on their humility.

acts vs. words

I was reminded of this sort of uppityness during Mass Saturday evening, when the deacon read the gospel of the day:

Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.

Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?”

And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.”

Matthew 7:21-23, New American Bible

How harsh and even short-sighted Jesus seems in this passage. His affiliates marketed prophesy, exorcisms, and miracles in his name, yet he demands that they unfollow him, contending they don’t belong. Surely their every deed proved that they were part of his clan, though, right?

Wrong.

Earlier in the conversation, Jesus had warned the disciples–his core followers–about false prophets “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

Jesus was saying that people can look and act like sheep but have the inward dispositions of ravenous wolves. Be aware of this sort of person, he taught, by looking at deeds and fruits.

Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.