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not going to be respectful of that Confederate Flag being up there, just as previous activists were not respectful of segregation. It's not that it's not defiant, but it's respectful. Here's how Higginbotham defines the term: It was not, she says, the "snobbish.middle class" idea of respectability that comes to mind today.
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The politics of respectability that she wrote about stemmed from a movement of low-income women fighting for their civil rights at the turn of the twentieth century. The way in which Higginbotham used the term in her book, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920, differs in some important ways from how the term is used today.Īccording to Higginbotham, the politics of respectability originally referred to a very nuanced notion of respect, especially in terms of class dynamics. One reader led us to this interview over at black feminist site For Harriet with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the woman who first conceptualized the politics of respectability in 1993. Easy sell to a white majority.- Dígame Concejal October 21, 2015īut in terms of where RP stems from, the answer is actually fascinating.
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Less often, we talk about more polarizing topics, like criminal records and female sexuality.įor every pants-puller-upper, someone else will argue, convincingly, that despite what RP claims to be - a means of self-preservation - it's often used to rationalize racism, sexism, bigotry, hate, and If you say prejudice can be overcome with good behavior, you concede its rationality. We negotiate the roles of religious institutions, conservative politicians, and parents. We debate the signposts of respectability, like saggy pants (bad) and college degrees (good). So what is that "certain lifestyle"? We've been squabbling over the details for decades, centuries even. You know what we're wading into here: respectability politics, the notion that problems in the black community spume from within, and that by adopting a certain lifestyle, black people can inoculate themselves from discrimination.
#RESPECTABILITY POLITICS DEFINITION SKIN#
Plenty of fashions adopted by young people get under the skin of adults, but the opposition to sagging often has the feel of a moral panic.