by Cally L. Waite
"Stop promoting RACIST respectability politics; professionalization is more than the outdated subservient culture this conference promotes. POC policing other POC on timeliness, dress, noise/voice level, comportment, etc., is unacceptable."
First of all, "OUCH!" The above is an anonymous comment from an evaluation of a conference for graduate students of color. Putting aside the body of literature that argues that Black people can't be racist, this comment did precisely what it intended—delivered a roundhouse blow that sent the organizers reeling and then into a defensive stance. Such is the impact of the term "respectability politics" or "the politics of respectability."
Why revive what for many is a moribund and limiting phrase? How does it relate to identification? I raise it because I think our contemporary assessment of the history of the contests and struggles this phrase represents must be understood in new ways directly related to the distinction between identification and identity that this issue of _OC_ seeks to make available for analytical and critical use. For the purposes of this essay, I will stress identification as a characterization or description that one is assigned as opposed to one that one claims as part of oneself. When one is accused of practicing respectability politics, there is almost always internally a strongly defensive immediate reaction of, "Who me? No! Not me!" The term feels like the ultimate verbal weapon of dismissal and disdain. When I sense myself accused of it, I feel myself looking from all angles into an internal mirror asking myself, "Where is this 'respectability politics' showing?"
Respectability politics is often one-dimensionally seen as a spoke in the wheel of progress—a capitulation on the part of those not bold enough to seek radical change. Such a characterization does a disservice to the history of change and activism. Respectability politics needs to be understood as a tool in a never-ending fight for social change. It was and remains one way of refusing oppression. Respectability politics, including its perceived role in "delaying" progress, were an integral tool in the history of change and activism. Its reductive use to impute a blanket lack of authenticity returns it to a tired and politically unproductive accusation of not being Black, Latinx, feminist, or (fill in the blank) enough. Why do we want to pretend that "the respectable" were not significant historical actors responsible for transformative change?
The work I do has impressed upon me more than ever of the necessity of emphasizing my overall conclusion that politics of respectability have played, and will continue to play, a crucial part in progress, change, and activism for Black people in the US. I am a historian of American higher education of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I focus on historically Black colleges and universities. My work, both as a scholar and a practitioner, centers on diversifying the professoriate and making the academy an inclusive and representative place. I do not see this as a static goal. There is no preordained marker that, when reached, will signal that the academy will have accomplished what needs to be done. Looking at how slowly change happens, I am forced to understand that my goals are a work in progress. In researching Black people and American education I have become acutely aware of the need to remove the stigma attached to the term "the politics of respectability." It needs to be reclassified and newly understood as a useful strategy in an arsenal of varied strategies to reach an overarching goal that encompasses real possibilities of democracy and social equity under contemporary conditions of governance and sustainability. The politics of respectability has to be revalued in the overall context of African American history and its attendant struggles including those of the immediate present. There will be struggle for change and progress past my lifetime. We face a battle that will last for many generations. From that perspective, I'm convinced the politics of respectability will assume a role whose importance the future will not dismiss. It will come to be perceived to have made everything that happened for the better possible.
How should we define respectability politics? When I raised this as a topic with my colleagues, they looked at me strangely, asking, "Isn't that just being asked to pull your pants up and use standard English?" "Are we still talking about that? What does it even mean?" In thinking about my own work within higher education, I want to answer, "We are all guilty of respectability politics." Clearly, all of us in higher education have had to practice respectability politics to some degree. Without it, no marginalized or underrepresented group would now be faculty members in universities. That doesn't mean that once our positions within an institution are secured, we do not become bolder or more demanding of change. Perhaps the easiest characterization is that we are acting according to a standard set by the majority group—that we are in some ways "acting White." I am loath to put those words to paper because they are so deeply essentialist, inadequate, and a huge part of the problem. For now, let me just say that Black people acting to "American" (Anglicized) standards of democracy in the face of the absolute betrayal of those standards by Whites through racist and racialized structures of oppression has always been what has given democracy a credible and viable future in this country. This is true both for the majority of the White population and for the rest of us who live here. The significance of the etiquette called for by the fierce moral politics of American democratic historical justice cannot be understood without an appreciation of the transformative value of the politics of respectability. To dismiss it out of hand is a major failure of historical analysis and imagination. When the term is used to suggest that someone is not authentic, significant harm is perpetrated with respect to both the past and the present.
Faculty members and all those working within higher education, put your backs down and relax. The very process by which you got your position, asked you to perform a type of respectability politics. Think about that for a second. Whatever "radical" or "activist" actions we take towards change are possible because we are within that space. Let's use the lens of our self-awareness about this fact to think about how respectability politics contributed to activism and what future role it will play. There is an assumption as well, that respectability politics makes one accepted within a majority structure. Regardless of our performance of respectability politics, our brown skin makes those of us performing it, still suspect. The majority group does not see respectability politics. It is a cudgel wielded within underrepresented communities against its own members. When we look at how respectability politics worked in the past, we should let ourselves recognize the performance of them as one part of a multi-layer strategy of empowered activism that engenders change.
History is an important tool in rethinking respectability politics. It helps us to cast it as an effective tool that has existed for many decades. History is a reminder of how slowly change happens, how hard fought it is, and how the battle for it precedes and exceeds our lifetimes. Our view of respectability politics will also change depending on context. Respectability politics is, in some ways, a dated and narrow perspective from which to view and with which to characterize and evaluate people. It can seem to promote the idea that there is a monolith of Black thought and Black action and one "acceptable" way of being Black and one way of being an activist. The examples below show how respectability politics was in fact a valuable form of activism in the persistent quest for freedom from oppression and for the full equality promised by American democratic ideals over many centuries. My examples draw on two important periods in history in which groups and organizations, often accused of practicing a politics of accommodation, actively advanced intrinsically progressive causes.
During the Progressive Era, spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, women's clubs became quite popular. They were but one of the many organizations that formed during this period of profound change in the United States. Accompanying unprecedented economic growth, technological progress, and record-high immigration was deep concern about the social cohesion and wellbeing of the general population. The women's club movement brought White women into a new realm of social and political influence. Some women's clubs were made up of suffragists organizing around the franchise for women. Other clubs rejected the notion of women's equality and voting rights and focused instead on the domestic arts of beautifying the home and the community. Some took as their goal the "assimilation" of immigrants. Some advocated for the vote and for beautifying the public environment. Still others focused on the "Americanization" of immigrant women.
Black women across the country embraced the opportunity to formalize much of the work they had been doing informally and created their own clubs. Black women's clubs were important agents for change though they were stratified by class and had disparate goals. At their core however they shared a common mission to contribute to "the uplift of the race" and the uplift of Black women in particular.
Margaret Murray Washington, a classically educated Fisk graduate, the "lady principal" of Tuskegee Institute, and the third wife of Booker T. Washington, chaired the women's club of Tuskegee. It only admitted college graduates. Her group focused their attention on social and recreational activities. Guest lecturers were invited to further educate women on the issues of the day. This group demonstrated an obvious classism looking down on the poor and those who did not have a college education. A quick assessment would suggest that the Tuskegee women were practicing respectability politics by focusing on members of their own class and seeking to reproduce the prevailing system. We should not classify these women as activists. But before judging and dismissing women's clubs as places that simply practiced respectability politics, let's remember that this period has been characterized as "the nadir of race relations" in the memorable phrase of Howard University history professor Rayford Logan. Women's clubs played a significant role in advancing goals of equality in a time when survival itself was in jeopardy.
It would be easy to dismiss the organizers of women's clubs, many of whom were college educated and came from relatively privileged backgrounds, of practicing respectability politics. Yet consider Ida B. Wells, the outspoken anti-lynching journalist who called on women to be political activists and participate in the advancement of the race by promoting the equality of Black women. She was a founder of women's clubs across the country and not just in her home city of Chicago. These women's clubs were the sites of change for Black women. In Washington DC, The National League of Colored Women, under the leadership of Mary Church Terrell, focused on filling the social welfare void that existed for Black people at the end of the 19th century. Terrell was educated at Oberlin College and did post baccalaureate work at the Sorbonne. Throughout her life she was outspoken about the oppression and inequality of all Black people. In particular she emphasized the oppression of Black women. Towards the end of her life she published A Colored Woman in a White World emphasizing the "unique double burden" of being Black and a woman. Both these women used their influence and positions of power to organize and lead Black women.
"Education" was a broad unifying term that acceptably named the transformative political and activist role played by women's clubs overall. 1 Women's clubs across the country focused on expanding education for Black children, establishing orphanages, increasing health education, providing missions for young women arriving alone in cities, and using collective bargaining to raise the salaries of Black teachers. Black women's clubs were indispensable in filling a void during the progressive era by effectively creating a social service network that improved the lives and livelihoods of Black Americans.
While some groups may now be characterized by some as having been "too tame" in focusing on home life and education and by others as "too radical" in their demands for equality as women and as Black people, both kinds of organization were wise enough strategically to recognize their collective power. To be clear, there were long standing differences amongst these women. The leaders themselves admitted that they modeled themselves after their White counterparts. There is no getting away from the elite status of most of the women who served as presidents of these clubs. The politics they practiced nevertheless proved to be very powerful. In 1896, Margaret Murray Washington, Mary Church Terrell, Nannie Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Josephine St. Pierre and other women's clubs' presidents around the country combined their organizations to form the National Association of Colored Women with Mary Church Terrell as the first president. The motto they chose for it was "Lifting as we Climb."
The formation of the NACW attests to the range of approaches used to advance the cause of Black people and Black women. I don't want this conclusion to be taken as romanticized version of "can't we all get along?" These women recognized the efficacy of multiple strategies and understood how their combined strength gave them greater political agency and voice. The strategies of Ida B. Wells and Margaret Murray Washington differed considerably and may have caused discord, but both women practiced forms of activism. Both empowered Black women. This point should never be lost in considering how we assess the idea and the value of respectability politics. Internal fights about who is "activist enough" or whose strategy is "right" often distract us from the greater goals of freedom from oppression and the attainment of equality.
Respectability politics has a role to play in activism. There is no one way to push for progress or advance a cause. Just as there is no monolithic Black community where we all believe and behave in the same way, there is no monolithic Black activism. "Respectability politics" is a term we people of color wield against one another far too easily. Our invidious use of it diminishes our collective power. I think about those who have performed a particular way to gain entrée into a world previously denied to us. Each of us who are faculty of color performed like members of the majority group to earn the positions that we have. We must all reckon with the personal cost of this and with any internal aversion it may have caused. But when I see the work that scholars of color produce—the way in which we don't just challenge the prevailing narrative but dismantle it and rewrite it—I know the price of that performance was worth it.
Think how little we, our students, and our colleagues would know were it not for the type of fearless work that brings new voices and perspectives into the world through the academy. I am thinking here of many scholars: James D. Anderson and his seminal work, The Education of Blacks in the South 1865-1930, who made Black people present and gave them agency in attaining education; Erica A. Dunbar who tells the story of Black women in the colonial period of America and changes our understanding of the founding fathers with her work, Never Caught; Charles Pierce, the Harvard psychologist who first coined the term "microaggressions"; bell hooks who connected education to freedom in Teaching to Transgress; Michelle Foster whose Black Teachers on Teaching gave voice to generations of educators previously ignored; Derrick Bell whose And We are not Saved reframed our understanding of the quest for racial justice. This is just to name a few of the thousands of scholars who have given a broader, more nuanced and complex form to the existence of Black people in America. 2 Their work has challenged and changed what is considered knowledge and who produces it.
How do we balance such feats with our acknowledgment that we practiced (and still may have to practice) a form of respectability politics to occupy the platform in the academy we have achieved? We can make one of our goals the elimination of that necessity. Let that be one more step in attaining our desire to be free and equal. I want us to see respectability politics as a tool as opposed to an endpoint. I must come clean and say that I too have dismissed others' performances (within and outside of the academy) as respectability politics. I want to emphasize a distinction. It is respectability politics as an end unto themselves that I reject and critique. "Acting White" or wanting to "be White" is problematic, delusional and regressive. No matter how much money we make, no matter where we dine, what we drive, or where we live, we can't escape our beautiful and multi-hued skin—nor, most importantly, should we want to. I refuse to countenance any respectability politics that asks us to ignore or reject a deep cultural history and pride, or any part of ourselves, in pursuit of "Whiteness." The goal is not to be White or to be around White people. The goal is to be free to be Black in this world and be equal in the presence of all opportunities. This timeless battle needs all of the means at our disposal—including respectability politics.
It is important to emphasize that respectability politics is performative. The first half of the twentieth century illustrates this point. In the Jim Crow south of the early 20th century, respectability politics were often a necessity for survival and a tool for entry into restricted and hostile spaces. Appearing to be "too" much of anything connected to Black culture could cause White violence. The way one dresses or speaks does not protect one from discrimination or violence, but a quiet and understated presence can be key to one's survival. Context is crucial. Within the context of the segregated south of the early twentieth century behavior we might now label accommodationist for its passivity was actually a key strategy for change. Criticism of conforming to the status quo—of performing in accordance with the standards of the majority—ignores the real and imminent danger Black people faced. The Civil Rights Movement (CRM) of the mid-20th century, the largest and most significant social movement of the century, employed a type of well-dressed quiet presence that seemed to suggest acquiescence to White standards—even a desire to be a part of the majority group. Actually, this behavior was a form of dissemblance—a masking of the inner self. Obfuscation of real intent was both a means for survival and a tool for progress against White oppression. This contradiction at the heart of the performance of respectability constituted a politics that both disguised and simultaneously advanced the agenda of freedom from racial oppression.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, a class action suit that in 1954 declared the doctrine "separate but equal" unconstitutional, was a watershed moment in a long legal battle by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. It is crucial to remember that the argument for desegregated public schooling was not an end unto itself. It was, rather, a vehicle for challenging and dismantling Jim Crow. Schools remained the cornerstone of segregation. By the fall of 1957, only 684 of the 3,000 schools ordered to desegregate by the consent decree that accompanied the Brown decision had done so. Only White schools were ordered to desegregate, meaning they now had to admit Black students. No Black schools were ordered to admit White students into their classrooms. In fact, in the aftermath of Brown, several Black schools, deemed "inferior," were closed, and many Black teachers lost their jobs. While the NAACP worked to have Black students enter White schools, not all of the Black families agreed with this strategy. There were those who opposed having their children attend a White school, concerned about their safety and the quality of education they would receive as Black students. Many saw this form of integration as acquiescence to the White majority and therefore as a type of respectability politics that did not advance the cause of equality. For them it was more important to have equal resources for education than to attend White schools. Closing Black schools eliminated opportunities and further limited choice.
Respectability politics as performance were key to the desegregation plan for Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. The NAACP wanted to dramatize Black community support for these students. Oppositional voices were silenced. The national and local media wanted to paint a picture of deep social unrest swirling around these nine Black teenagers and their quest for an "equal" education. The nine students were carefully chosen. They were at the top of their class in the Black high school. They were well dressed and comported themselves at all times according to the standards of "proper" behavior. They had attended strategy meetings with the NAACP about how they would navigate Central High School and the coming year. Their task was controversial and not only because of the racial strife and the danger they faced at the hands of the White opposition. The controversy also came from within the Black community. Some in the Black community objected to these Little Rock Nine performing the epitome of respectability politics and opposed their conformist compliance with the etiquette of the majority group. No one expected the level of opposition and unrest so well documented by the news media on that first day of school. Here was a group of well-dressed and well behaved "Negro" students attempting to enter a hostile environment. I believe it is crucial to understand that the Little Rock Nine were in fact practicing dissemblance as a high form of political activism. From their reflective interviews over the decades, we know how they envisioned their purpose and their actions at the time. Theirs was never a simple case of "acting White" in order to enter Central High School.
In fact, their actions were a successful means of both realizing and revising the American mythos of democracy. Acceptance within White space was never their goal. Their actions were a way of pushing against the barriers of inequality and oppression. The joint performance by the NAACP and the students turned out to be cataclysmic. School districts around the south closed schools to avoid admitting Black students. 3 Rather than protecting students, respectability politics, by dramatizing the students' resistance to the White mob violence that surrounded them, highlighted the issue of inequality and caused a far greater reaction than anyone expected. Equally important were those communities that refused to close their Black schools and advocated for the value of Black education. Both of these responses to Brown—the battle to break down barriers to resources and opportunity orchestrated by the NAACP and the resistance of Black communities to White control of their schools—highlight the complexity of desegregation and the varieties of activism in relation to the politics of respectability.
Activism takes many forms and history shows us changing dynamics of respectability politics. It also shows how activism and the politics of respectability can work in concert. In his new project, Teachers in the Movement, Derrick Alridge is on a mission to record the voices of over 500 Black southern teachers from the 1970s and 1980s. 4 He asks them directly how they counter the charges of practicing respectability politics. What is notable in their responses is that they saw and still see themselves as activists. Certainly, they conformed to the dress code for teachers and followed the code of conduct laid out by their school districts. Teachers, for decades, were seen as community leaders who set the standard for behavior. Protesting would have lost them their jobs. Some critics suggest that these teachers were only concerned about their own livelihoods and that respectability politics made them adversaries in the growing battle for social change and racial equality. They have been accused of serving the interests of the White majority. Many Black teachers took the position that it was important for them to be in the classroom. Alridge's project highlights the role the curriculum and pedagogy played in challenging and redefining the prevailing notion of what activism is.
Wasn't it better to have a Black teacher in Black schools than a White teacher? Studying the curriculum guides used in schools of education at HBCUs, it is clear that Black teachers, since the late 19th century, have been teaching Black history. 5 They taught it within the constraints of a racist and unequal school system to ensure that Black children would receive a quality education that recognized them. Alridge emphasizes the immeasurable empowerment all the teachers he interviewed said they felt their teaching conveyed to their students. The students who graduated from these segregated schools, especially those who graduated in the 1960s and 1970s, were prepared for the work that lay ahead of them. The teachers felt their work in the classroom was foundational for progressive social change. Students they taught, they believed, claimed their place as Americans with new self-definitions that went far beyond the prescribed Anglicization the school system attempted to inculcate.
These teachers did not jeopardize their jobs by directly challenging the status quo of the school systems within which they worked. Nevertheless they were able to teach their students about freedom in a way that made their students understand their importance as Black people in the world. They taught their students to take pride in Blackness and in who they were as Americans. For them an indispensable activism was embedded within respectability.
I've offered a tiny glimpse of how history is filled with examples of performative respectability politics. Let me be clear that I'm not suggesting that there aren't instances where people embrace the ugly side of respectability politics—believing that their performance will bring acceptance, elevate, and separate the performer from their racial identity. Respectability politics as a form of dissemblance has contributed significantly to activism. The search for freedom and racial progress needs more than one approach. While some people are protesting and raising their voices and thereby bringing to light seemingly never-ending acts of racial oppression, there are others working quietly yet boldly to provide the foundation for the work that lies at the forefront of change.
Brian Owens and his father Thomas, remind us “A Change is Gonna Come” (written by Sam Cooke in 1963).
We need to think carefully before we use respectability politics as an accusation of accommodation with which to contrast a superior and more "authentic" confrontational activism of opposition. The politics of respectability has been indispensable to advancing the larger cause. It still is often a useful strategy. Even when we choose not to pursue it, we must be careful not to minimize its accomplishments.
The continued judgmental weaponization of the term "respectability politics" only hinders the accomplishment of shared goals. The Ashanti proverb says, "Two men in a burning house must not stop to argue." Our house of racial oppression burns with the intensity of an inferno. Let's use all of our available weapons not only to save ourselves but to douse the fire and rebuild a better place to live.
1 Gerda Lerner's 1974 article, "Early Community work of Black Club Women," remains a fine foundational piece for understanding the development of women's clubs at the turn of the century. Journal of Negro History (April 1974, Vol. 59, No. 2, pp 158-167.
2 Clearly, this is not an exhaustive list. The bibliography would be far longer than this essay if I were to list the many scholars of color who have changed the narrative and influenced our thinking. I would encourage the reader to think about what seminal works changed their thinking or most strongly shaped their scholarly view.
3 Little Rock closed its schools the following year (1958). New Orelans, and areas of Louisiana took the same route when Ruby Bridges attempted to enter kindergarten, and the state of Virginia ceased public instruction for several years rather than desegregate their schools.
4 <https: data-preserve-html-node="true"//teachersinthemovement.com/> This work, funded by a Spencer grant, is a major undertaking to record the oral histories of Black teachers in the south over three decades.
5 My current research project looks at the curriculum taught by Black teachers throughout the south. The records at over 29 hbcus show that African and African American history were widely taught as part of the social studies curriculum in teacher training programs.