The Rise of Respectability Politics

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:


The Rise of Respectability Politics
By Fredrick C. Harris - Winter 2014


[font size="1"]At the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington (Victoria Pickering / Flickr)[/font]


This past September, during the first week of school, seven-year-old Tiana Parker wore dreadlocks tied in a bright pink bow to her school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Deborah Brown Community School, a charter school sponsored by the historically black college Langston University, sent Tiana home and told her parents that their child was in violation of a school policy prohibiting students from wearing “unusual hairstyles” that distract from the school’s “respectful” learning environment. Not only were “dreadlocks, Afros, Mohawks,” and other so-called faddish styles banned from the school, the school’s handbook also instructed that girls’ “weaved hair should be no longer than shoulder length” and that boys’ hairstyles are “to be short and neatly trimmed.”

Tiana’s parents withdrew her from the school, leading to public outrage across the nation. The school eventually modified (but did not end) its policy, but its rules regulating the personal conduct of parents and guardians have escaped public scrutiny. According to the handbook, female parents are banned from entering the school or going on field trips braless; male parents are prohibited from wearing pants that sag; vulgarity or cursing by parents is subject to prosecution under the state’s criminal penal codes; and the display of “inappropriate behavior” during school programs—such as holding a crying baby or using a cell phone—can get parents escorted from the school’s premises by security guards. These sorts of rules—devised by black elites, with the backing of the state and the support of ordinary blacks who believe in their efficacy—have their origins in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century black middle-class ideology: the politics of respectability.

What started as a philosophy promulgated by black elites to “uplift the race” by correcting the “bad” traits of the black poor has now evolved into one of the hallmarks of black politics in the age of Obama, a governing philosophy that centers on managing the behavior of black people left behind in a society touted as being full of opportunity. In an era marked by rising inequality and declining economic mobility for most Americans—but particularly for black Americans—the twenty-first-century version of the politics of respectability works to accommodate neoliberalism. The virtues of self-care and self-correction are framed as strategies to lift the black poor out of their condition by preparing them for the market economy.

.......(snip).......

The only speaker to disrupt the rags-to-riches narratives was the public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson, who told the story of his brother, a prison inmate serving time for murder. Though Dyson acknowledged that his brother, by his own admission, had made some “self-destructive choices,” Dyson also mentioned how social barriers and structural forces placed greater disadvantages on his brother than on him. Noting how his light-skin privilege allowed him to receive more support than his darker-skin sibling, Dyson said he was encouraged by many for his intellect while his brother, who was equally bright, was seen as someone who may not live up to his potential.

Dyson, like Perry and Johnson, emphasized the importance of religion in his life. But he also acknowledged the importance of government-sponsored youth programs—like the Comprehensive Employment Training Act—that allowed him to get a job and learn valuable skills early in life. He also acknowledged the political struggle of the previous generations of activists—people like Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, and Ella Baker—that had transformed the United States into a more just society. “I don’t damn young people for having low-slung drawers,” Dyson quipped; “raise up their dreams and their drawers will follow.” But Dyson’s insights were lost in a chorus of triumphalism. Stevie Wonder ended the program with a rousing rendition of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” replacing the verb “shall” in the lyrics with “have,” as in, “We Have Overcome.” ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-rise-of-respectability-politics