The Fool’s Errand: Respectability Politics
Why do we constantly ask the oppressed to cater to the standards set by their oppressors?
The term “respectability politics” was coined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Higginbotham used the term to describe the social change that was occurring in the black community at the time — Black women built social welfare networks and institutions in their community in order to increase its “respectability” by white society. Many Black educators during the Jim Crow era encouraged their students to integrate themselves into white communities in order to access resources and escape injustice. By making themselves as “respectable” as possible in the eyes of white folks, the idea was that Black people could have a better chance of minimizing harm.
Respectability politics is the idea that oppressed people should do their best to cater to the dominant ideologies in order to achieve respect. While respectability politics started as a method to ensure the safety of marginalized people, it has morphed into a way for dominant groups to police the oppressed and justify any harm that comes their way. The failure of respectability politics is that even when marginalized people do everything in their power to appear “respectable” to mainstream society — respectability is still not an effective protection from harm.
Today we see examples of respectability politics aimed at every type of marginalized group. When a Black person is killed by the police, the media often tries to dig up any previous charges or expose them as being a drug user, despite the obvious fact that having prior charges or using drugs still does not excuse police murder. By painting the picture of a victim of police brutality as someone who is “not respectable”, the violence against them can be justified to white society.
However, even when Black people make every effort to appear respectable and contribute to society, they are still brutalized and killed. Breonna Taylor had no criminal record, was an educated, married woman who played an important role in her community as an EMT. She was still murdered by the police.
Similarly, Black people are allowed to protest police brutality, but they have to do it in peaceful and convenient ways or else their concerns are deemed unworthy of attention.
Respectability politics also come into play when people, especially women, are raped. If a woman survives rape and is not the “perfect victim”, she has little hope of pursuing justice in court. If she is more sexually active than society deems appropriate, if she consumed alcohol the night of her assault, if she has engaged in sex work, or if she has a history of mental illness she will essentially be written off as un-rapeable and deserving of the harm that came her way.
Respectability politics affect the LGBTQ community as well. Queer people face pressure to conform to hetero- and cisnormativity in order to achieve respect. For example, to be considered valid in the eyes of society and escape ridicule, trans people must do everything in their power to “pass” and conform to gender stereotypes in hopes of getting the basic decency of people respecting their identity. Trans people that do not conform to cisnormativity or are seen as not putting enough effort into “passing” become fair game for ridicule, criticism and even violence.
Ultimately respectability politics reinforce the dominant ideologies of white supremacy, patriarchy, cisheteronormativity, etc. Respectability politics tie into validating these systems of oppression and create a situation where oppressed people are trying to replicate the behavior of the oppressors, instead of being seen as human on their own terms. Catering to respectability politics is essentially saying “make sure this harm happens to someone else instead of me”, instead of working to eliminate the source of harm. It is treating oppression as a fact of life instead of a political condition that can be dismantled through collective effort.
Every person that belongs to an oppressed group will at certain points be in situations where they find themselves conforming to respectability politics in order to attain safety, employment, etc. This is at many times necessary for survival for those who are Othered by society. Marginalized people should not be attacked for doing what is necessary to ensure safety or survival. Catering to respectability politics can be a valid survival mechanism at times.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. — Audre Lorde.
Yet respectability politics are harmful because instead of allowing oppressed people to be themselves, they create a culture in which marginalized people must devote so much of their energy towards being perceived as respectable. Not only is it a fool’s errand, but no one that is not a cisgendered, heterosexual white Christian male will ever be deemed respectable enough to be out of harm’s way. The standards for oppressed people’s “respectability” will always be impossibly high. These standards are the very foundations of oppression and domination, and are designed to be impossible to meet.
The lie of respectability politics is even what brings us the Karen, the woman who thinks that if she plays by the rules of the white supremacist patriarchy, she will eventually be granted the level of power and respect that is afforded to white men. However this never happens, and as a result, society has a rampant Karen problem in which we have increasingly frustrated white women running around trying to assert their power in the most pathetic of ways — mainly via harassing retail workers and calling the police on Black people for existing in public. This phenomena is nowhere near new, but due to social media the pattern is exposed more widely and has gone viral.
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” — Assata Shakur
The more energy oppressed people have to put towards appearing respectable, the less energy they have to heal and find liberation. Respectability politics are a never-ending assignment, a pipe dream of the false promise of freedom. In truth, oppressed people do not need to become more “respectable” to be acknowledged as human. Every human deserves dignity and respect. If you only respect marginalized people when they conform to a certain standard, your sense of respect for human dignity is false, and you remain complicit in their oppression.
