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WHAT STARTED as an internal philosophy post-slavery to “uplift the race” by correcting the “bad” traits of poor and working-class Black people has now evolved into one of the hallmarks of what is expected of Black American women. Propriety has become a governing philosophy in media, the workplace, and the academy, especially for Black women as they age. It is a societal expectation that centers on managing the behavior of Black people, largely Black women, who have otherwise been neglected in a society that only wants to offer opportunity to those who have been approved by gatekeepers.
Respectability depends on acceptably performing gender and sexuality in ways that don’t threaten traditional ideas of masculinity. In order to maintain their social and economic status, Black women are expected to manage their identities and sexual reputations in order to fit into a mixture of virgin and vixen constructs. Black women who attempt to craft an image of innocence may receive slightly more sympathy and thus better opportunities, but their ability to adhere to that image is tenuous.
Respectability politics are really about controlling group behavior with designations of appropriate or inappropriate behavior rooted in structural inequality. Gatekeepers of respectability push dominant narratives but don’t necessarily understand where their ideas of what is respectable come from, or how much of it is about mimicry and not innate value. The structure of respectability requires adherence, not autonomy, and relies on dominant norms to create a hierarchy of privilege inside marginalized communities.
In an era marked by rising inequality and declining economic mobility for Black Americans, the modern version of the politics of respectability works to accommodate misogynoir. Misogynoir is a term coined by queer Black feminist professor Moya Bailey to describe the specific misogyny directed toward Black women in American visual and popular culture because of their race and gender. Self-care and self-correction are framed as strategies to lift poor Black women out of the hood by preparing them to participate in an economy that will demand respectability as a key part of being able to access even the least desirable jobs. In this way, respectability acts to simultaneously enable and limit the scope of opportunities for communities to thrive.
We have tied concepts like “lift as we climb” (coined after the Civil War to describe the idea that successful Black people had a duty to help those behind them) so deeply to what we present to the outside world that we don’t even realize that working to prove to white America that Black people are worthy of full citizenship is ultimately a losing proposition. Any system that ties our rights to getting the entire Black community to assimilate isn’t interested in equality, much less equity. Modern politics of respectability have gone a step further, demanding that Black people pull themselves up by imaginary bootstraps in order to be found worthy.
Inherent in the ideology of respectability, like most strategies for progress that fail to confront the impact of anti-Blackness, becoming a gatekeeper isn’t the road to freedom for anyone. This is an issue that largely played out away from the gaze of white America. But now that some Black Americans have achieved a measure of success that renders them hypervisible in ways that make them part of the mainstream elite in media, business, politics, and the academy, respectability politics influence what is perceived as acceptable within the official boundaries of the mainstream. Respectability-focused gatekeepers are shaping who gets to have opinions that inform policies on what should and should not be available to the poorest Black communities.
Respectability politics have become de facto rules for marginalized people to follow in order to be respected in mainstream culture, but they reflect antiquated ideals set up by white supremacy. The depiction of the cultures that Black Americans create in low-income areas like the hood as ghetto or ratchet has very little to do with any real interest in their success, and everything to do with creating a series of hoops and obstacles to arbitrarily impede the progress of those with the fewest resources.
Overwhelmingly, respectability is financially and emotionally expensive. Like code-switching, it requires fundamental changes in how you present yourself. But there aren’t just specific speech patterns that are changed in the moment; instead there’s a nonstop remodeling of body language, wardrobe, and hairstyles so as to be seen as nonthreatening, engaged, and somehow ready to join the broader world. In many ways, respectability politics treat assimilation and accommodation as mandatory. Yet we know that respectability comes with no guarantees. The demand is that Black women police their appearances, speech, and sexuality. There’s a cultural pressure to be an upstanding Black woman, to avoid any behavior that makes Black women “look bad.” We are expected to constantly adjust our own behavior to avoid the racist, classist, and sexist stereotypes other people might assign to us.
But while we put this pressure on each other and ourselves, it does little to stop the impact of racism. Sure, it makes us feel like we have slightly more control when we know the ultimate culprit is racism and the work of dismantling it can’t be done by us. But when Black women internalize the standards set by racism and hold ourselves to oppressive standards, we create a self-replicating schism inside our own communities. We pretend that the problem is the girls with the hoop earrings and the fishnets; we hop on a bandwagon of venerating standard English over African American Vernacular English, only to end up angry that even as it is derided, everyone else feels free to capitalize on it. We write classism into our own communities, standing in the way of the smart and the talented if they can’t code-switch. We enforce our oppression on a micro level and dabble in the culture, but refuse to defend those who create and contribute to it unless they are part of the lucky few who get famous.
Respectability politics are, at their core, an easy way to avoid engaging with history and current events. If we admit that Blackness comes in many forms, that our culture is glorious and worthwhile, then we also have to face the fact that we will never be able to achieve this mythical space where color doesn’t matter, where our class and culture is respected. We want a route to undo the impact of history and it simply doesn’t exist.
We point to the suits and ties and dresses worn during the civil rights movement and ignore that the people in them were still beaten, still arrested, still lynched. We sneer at the innovations in the hood until we see them on the right celebrities. We adore the idea of a fierce Black girl who fights back, but we penalize her as soon as she does it.
We love a Black accent on everyone but Black women. Mind you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sounding Black except that in a culture where respectability politics mean that whiteness is rendered as normative, a Black girl who speaks with a “blaccent” is judged as less valuable and less intelligent. Code-switching elders teach us to make calls with our best “white girl” voice, but for those who can’t manage to mimic that speech pattern, or who can’t maintain it, that accent means the loss of opportunities.
We treat speaking in African American Vernacular English in much the same American-centric way that we treat people who can’t speak English. We judge them when they appear on TV as victims of brutality from the state; we bemoan the proliferation of more casual language rooted in slang from marginalized communities, even though we know all language is a human construct and none of it is more valid than any other.