Respectability politics is one of the most rejected ideas in Black America today. But in 1993 a Black woman coined the phrase, and she meant it as a compliment. This video traces how it flipped, what actually caused the rejection, and why the fix isn’t more programs.
Script Sources and Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1scZWBzev3p0x_6tnEIhMdi2-CwLM_3kKukRiYVFzTzE/edit
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0:00 What respectability politics actually means
0:50 A Black woman coined it, and she meant it as praise
1:15 Somebody flipped the words around
2:00 What rejecting it looks like
5:50 No, this isn’t all Black people
6:34 A whole bunch of “buts”
7:23 What being respectable was never for
8:30 The caricature nobody wants to look at
11:00 But some of us got it right
11:41 How one man turned into a whole culture
12:57 The word we borrowed from white folks
13:58 By the 60s it’s out in the open
15:42 When breaking the rules stopped costing you
16:48 The Japanese didn’t wait for anybody
18:21 The question I never get answered
19:35 Who actually invented being respectable
20:19 We already did this once
21:25 Where most of the violence starts
22:32 The one thing to stay consistent about
23:11 Why this matters to me
FURTHER READING
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent (1993) – https://amzn.to/4rzxOW5
Glenn Loury, Late Admissions (2024) – https://amzn.to/3T7MbV1
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (1939) – https://amzn.to/4jremZA
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