Respectability Politics
The politics of respectability entailed “reform of individual behavior as a goal in itself and as a strategy for reform.” Respectability was part of “uplift politics,” and had two audiences: African Americans, who were encouraged to be respectable, and white people, who needed to be shown that African Americans could be respectable.
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
referenced in Paisley Jane Harris's
"Gatekeeping and Remaking"
referenced in Paisley Jane Harris's
"Gatekeeping and Remaking"
Conspicuous Fraud Series #1 (Eminence), Kehinde Wiley
"Stigma isn't an attribute, it's a relationship; one is normal against another person who is not. White women were respectable over and against the degradation of black women."
"Her decency also required someone to be respectable against."
-Saidiya Hartman,
Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments
Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments
"And what did it mean that number 2 pencils, conjugation without context, Pythagorean theorems, handshakes, and head nods were the difference between life and death, were the curtains drawing down between the world and me?"
"But a great number of educators spoke of personal "responsibility" in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility."
-Ta-Nehisi Coates,
Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me
"During the period of liberation, however, the colonialist bourgeoise frantically seeks contact with the colonized "elite." It is with this elite that the famous dialogue on values is established. When the colonialist bourgeoise realizes it is impossible to maintain domination over the colonies it decides to wage a rearguard campaign in the fields of culture, values, and technology, etc."
-Frantz Fanon,
Wretched of the Earth
Wretched of the Earth
