Respectability politics

Respectability politics or the politics of respectability refers to attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as being continuous and compatible with mainstream values rather than challenging the mainstream for its failure to accept difference. The concept was first articulated by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. In the context of black American history, respectability politics was practiced as a way of attempting to consciously set aside and undermine cultural and moral practices thought to be disrespected by wider society, especially in the context of the family and good manners.^[1] The development of African-American politics of responsibility has been traced to writers and activists including W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, and has been used as a way of understanding the election and political trajectory of Barack Obama.^[2][3] President Obama has also been criticized for his use of respectability politics during his presidency, as when he brought up issues of black criminality during his speech following the November 24 grand jury decision regarding the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.^[4][5] One of the most open proponents of respectability politics is former-NBA player Charles Barkley.^[6]

Campaigners for gay rights have also struggled with the issue of respectability politics. A distinction has been drawn between an attitude that celebrated and affirmed sexual difference in 1960s gay rights campaigns and contemporary approaches that seek to reduce and underplay sexual differences and portray gay people as having similar values to wider heterosexual society.^[7]

See also

• Brown Paper Bag Test
• Cultural assimilation
• Niggas vs. Black People by Chris Rock^[8]
• Pound Cake speech by Bill Cosby^[9] - Cosby was criticised by Michael Eric Dyson in his book Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

References

1. Victoria W. Wolcott (2001). Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit. Univ of North Carolina Press. pp. 5–7. ISBN 978-0-8078-4966-8.
2. Fredrick Harris (15 June 2012). The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and Rise and Decline of Black Politics. Oxford University Press. pp. 101–106. ISBN 978-0-19-973967-7.
3. Frederick C. Harris (2014). "The Rise of Respectability Politics". Dissent. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
4. Nia-Malika, Henderson. "‘Black respectability’ politics are increasingly absent from Obama’s rhetoric". http://www.washingtonpost.com/. Retrieved 4 March 2015. External link in |website= (help)
5. Obama, Barack. "Remarks by the President After Announcement of the Decision by the Grand Jury in Ferguson, Missouri". http://www.whitehouse.gov/. Retrieved 4 March 2015. External link in |website= (help)
6. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "Charles Barkley and the Plague of 'Unintelligent' Blacks". http://www.theatlantic.com/. Retrieved 4 March 2015. External link in |website= (help)
7. Deborah B. Gould (15 December 2009). Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight against AIDS. University of Chicago Press. pp. 89–91. ISBN 978-0-226-30531-8.
8. Smith, Mychal. "Chris Rock’s poisonous legacy: How to get rich and exalted chastising “bad blacks”". Salon (12 November 2014). Retrieved 1 December 2014.
9. Coates, Ta-Nehisi (May 2008). "‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’". The Atlantic. Retrieved 1 December 2014.