Respectability Politics: C/D?

Where do you stand on the concept of "respectability politics"? Are you pro- or anti-? Why?

I guess I'm pretty anti- but this is more theoretical than actual for me, since I don't feel like any of the groups I belong to have really had to engage in it (I suppose Jews did at some point but not within my lifetime or familial memory, really)

basically my thinking is why seek the approval of assholes

This is pretty good.

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/no-disrespect

Policing the behavior of black women is not the answer. If it is wrong for a contemporary black actress to portray a maid, what message are we sending to black women who do domestic work? If it is wrong to be shown having sex with white men, what does that say about black women in interracial relationships with white men? If Erykah Badu is a whore for having children out of wedlock, what does that say about all black single mothers? Indeed, since more than half of births to all women under 30 occur outside of marriage (regardless of race), what does it say about women as a whole?

The goal of respectability politics may be noble, but the execution is flawed, damaging, and ineffective. By indulging in respectability politics, we acquiesce to the racially biased idea that the actions of individual black people are representative of the whole. We add to the pre-existing burdens of racism and sexism. And we fail to solve our problem, because we move the responsibility for eradicating race and gender biases from the powerful institutions and systems that perpetrate them to those oppressed by them. It is easier to try to control the oppressed than challenge the oppressor, but it is rarely a humane or useful approach.

so this question first got me thinking about analogues… and i was wondering, was there once a feminist respectability politics? 'we've got to show the men that we can be just as serious as them', etc.? i kinda wanna say yes (more of a first-wave thing? but second-wave too?), but it seems so remote now.

Surely there's still a feminist respectability politics?

And we fail to solve our problem, because we move the responsibility for eradicating race and gender biases from the powerful institutions and systems that perpetrate them to those oppressed by them.

^^^this. the crux of the issue.

xpost yeah, sadly it's pretty easy to find women who will denounce feminism

Yep. I've seen too many sentences prefaced by "I'm not a feminist but..."

xxp sharivari, i was thinking of it more as a matter of within-group policing of marked behavior, apparent or real deficiencies in personal responsibility and in the conventional civic virtues. sort of a 'don't make us look bad in front of the men!' attitude.

obviously there's some relation to the rampant policing of gender norms, but i don't feel confident about saying that that is the manifestation, now, of a respectability politics? it could be something else.

shakey, check this out:
http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2014/08/respectability-politics-and-causes-of.html

I agree w that guy

imo respectability politics as an attempt to ingratiate yourself in the eyes of a dominant group by mimicking their arbitrary cultural/linguistic standards is a dud, which is how i read the simple meaning of respectability (becoming respectable in the eyes of others). otoh my impression is that ppl who push respectability politics are simultaneously pushing virtues that are worthwhile for all humans - politeness + good manners, comporting oneself w/ dignity, working hard, taking care of your family + community, getting an education, etc. i think it's a mistake to pursue those things because you want to fit in w/ a bigoted majority community, but i think those things are valuable on their own.

altho there's extra layers there with the whole statehood thing and you know I don't agree w equating Israeli policies w Judaism/Jews in general. idk this seems like a tangent to some extent, it's certainly not something I've dealt with on a personal level, primarily because I am not personally responsible for Israeli policy.

xp

i think those things are valuable on their own

yeah they have their own value, no need to bring in this weird/misguided transactional aspect to it ("if I'm good will you treat me better?")

DJP, I assume this was prompted by my recent use of the phrase in another thread, so I'll go ahead and say: the duddest of the dud. As a white southerner born in the 80s & educated in the predominant liberal-progressive narrative of 'civil disobedience', I was kind of horrified when I started to scratch around a bit more & realize what really went on here in the '50s and '60s (and '70s, and '80s...), & the absurdity of expecting ANY community to demonstrate, somehow, that its members are deserving of the most basic human rights.

w/r/t Kalief Browder: it may not have been entirely appropriate for me to invoke the concept of 'respectability', but my point was that it may make a difference to some people (even though it shouldn't) that his death at the hands of our justice system was preceded by a period of quiet strength & patient suffering, rather than a heated altercation with some cops. In reality, the only people this can possibly matter to are the friends & loved ones who were by his side, watching him struggle for life; the plain fact is that he was killed by the exact same broken institutions, acting on the exact same dubious principles.

The thing with respectability politics that I think often gets missed with the denunciation is that it oftentimes isn't actually about policing your behavior of a marginalized group so that they will no longer be oppressed or marginalized; it is about removing the excuses that allow others to overlook or ignore the reasons why a marginalized group is being marginalized. If you live your life like Heathcliff Huxtable* and you are STILL being pulled over, singled out in airport security lines, denied favorable loan rates or credit, not granted interviews for jobs that you are clearly qualified to do, passed over repeatedly for promotions in favor of people less qualified than you, graded more harshly on subjective exams than your classmates, etc etc etc, the problem is not your attitude, it's not your aptitude, it's not your performance and it's not your behavior. You are making the good people who are oppressing you show their (sometimes unconscious) bias, which can't be as readily ignored or hand-waved.

Does this work? Probably not, or at least not as well as one would like it to work, largely because people are deeply invested in seeing themselves as the heroes/good guys of their own stories and are therefore wholly unwilling to face the idea that they are contributing to systemic institutional oppression. Do I think respectability politics still have a place in uncovering how pervasive oppression is in modern society? Yes.

* NOT BILL COSBY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1HygfLcBcw

as an individual choice I don't see the problem with trying to counteract prejudice by code switching? a problem is that institutionalized poverty amongst the prospective code switchers buttresses racism and sexism with classism, and deprives them of the opportunity to learn how to code switch well enough.

xxxxxp mordy, i think in black politics, and relatedly in some other ethnic politics, superficial respectability is hard to disentangle from the other one? which in some versions is probably frequently spelled out in terms of self-respect as a core virtue.

the way dan puts it just now makes me think of invocations of respectability politics as a kind of stoic/deontological ethics maneuver, too - if you can conduct yourself in such a way that your life is beyond reproach AND doing so uncovers the oppression it faces so that anyone with eyes can see it, then you're living in sort of a maximally just way. so one complaint from the other side, if you don't want to do that for politically strategic purposes, would be to say, why can't i have a politics that doesn't need ME to be the one living in a maximally just way? why is the stoic-style burden MINE?

I think some version of that plays itself out in case after case -- was Trayvon Martin a "good kid"? Was Michael Brown? etc. There's always an instinct to look for the perfect victim. But as we see over and over, nobody is ever so blameless that they can't be smeared as somehow deserving of their treatment -- asking for it -- by defenders of the power structure.

There's a version of respectability politics at work in the whole debate about the New Atheists, whether Dawkins and Hitchens "go too far" or are somehow "counterproductive." My feeling about that is that they're not there to be productive, exactly -- they're there to intentionally discomfit people and challenge the assumed universalism of the majority worldview.

a couple thoughts/questions that come to mind:
1) is respectability politics effectively a step on the way toward equality, or a dead end? did Booker T Washington accelerate the civil rights struggle or delay it? (there was a decent new yorker article about this a few years ago).
and
2) there may be an incentive to use respectability politics as a means of gaining power, as that bitchmagazine quote above suggests - "It is easier to try to control the oppressed than challenge the oppressor". obviously people aren't driven by a craven lust for power at all means (except certain politicians), but i think there's an innate benefit to self-policing behavior which is why you see it everywhere from children's play behavior to huge, multi-generational equality issues. i've certainly used it myself many times, sometimes shamefully.

The movement needed DuBois and Washington. I'd imagine Washington followers joined the NAACP.

the interesting moment of that david lammy tv segment (london mayoral candidate, first black english person to go to harvard law school) is a couple of minutes in where after arguing for a sort of respectability politics (discouraging predominantly black schoolchildren from using 'american slang') he describes his (upper middle class white) opponent as patronizing for arguing the opposite

and it's difficult to avoid the suspicion he is being patronizing, even if lammy's argument seems inadequate to both the context (code switching) and the general nature of how young black men are discriminated against by employers

^ that's one of the reasons i was wondering about analogues. the use of respectability politics is apparently not open to everyone, in familiar ways. but thinking about the current state of feminist politics, i was not sure whether the same would apply, say to proscriptions on men engaging in respectability-policing of women.

I think some version of that plays itself out in case after case -- was Trayvon Martin a "good kid"? Was Michael Brown? etc. There's always an instinct to look for the perfect victim. But as we see over and over, nobody is ever so blameless that they can't be smeared as somehow deserving of their treatment -- asking for it -- by defenders of the power structure.

This is the point though, or at least it's my point. In order to justify killings that are clearly (to me) racially motivated, the victims are described as inexorable monsters intent on murdering the men who killed them, which does not actually have any bearing on their actual lives or the "crimes" they were committing at the time they were killed.

There is also a point to be made about how one's ability to match the demographic that runs the power structure masks how much of your individual day-to-day behavior is informed by respectability politics. It's a generally unremarkable thing if you are a white person who is kind, polite, respectful, intelligent, and living a courteous life, but for some reason you are a pinnacle of humanity if you are a black person living the EXACT SAME LIFE. Think about why that is.

I am not naive enough to think that everyone who invokes/participates in "respectability politics" are doing so from a position of radical revolution rather than craven appeasement but it's massively insulting to assume every black person who wants everyone to be polite is doing so in order to get a cookie from massa.

I would never speculate on the motives that drive any individual to assimilate or not; neither would I attempt to wade into a debate on whether it makes a positive or negative contribution to the overall state of race relations in this country.

What blame there is to assign lies squarely with those people (white or otherwise) who are too stupid to grasp that the 'black community' is a broad spectrum, not a monolithic entity; that some of its members have the opportunity to learn the dominant culture's codes of behavior, while many do not. To assume that those in the latter group are there by choice, & to point to those in the former group as evidence of this fact, is a completely indefensible position.

DJP otm (& for Latinos too)

(I grew up reading my dad's subscription to Hispanic Business where I got to see a Latino take on this each month)

What blame there is to assign lies squarely with those people (white or otherwise) who are too stupid to grasp that the 'black community' is a broad spectrum, not a monolithic entity; that some of its members have the opportunity to learn the dominant culture's codes of behavior, while many do not.

I want you to reread this and think about exactly what you are saying here.

It's a generally unremarkable thing if you are a white person who is kind, polite, respectful, intelligent, and living a courteous life

Ha ha, you're not from the east coast, are you?

Ha ha, I've lived in Boston since 1991 and my point still stands

DJP: I'm not sure what the problem is, please enlighten me, I'm being 100% serious

If it helps the position I am trying to argue from is economic determinism -- that no one is going to change the way they speak or dress unless it is worth their while to do so; that the status quo offers little incentive for many people, particularly african-americans, to do this; that to expect someone in this position to prove him- or herself 'worthy of' charitable assistance or government benefits or whatever, after conceding the point that the community he or she comes from has been systematically disadvantaged, is a copout.

re my question before: i wonder if maybe workplace/work-world politics is a big place that respectability politics plays out currently for women

As far as I understand the term, one could argue that the way gay politics in America has been swallowed for the last decade by the marriage issue is respectability politics. "We're just like you, we WUV and mate for life [sic]."

something that doesn't always get talked about re: respectability politics is how it affects people brought up according to its strictures - it can function as another kind of oppression, contributing to internalised self-loathing etc bc ultimately it puts the blame on the individual

also as a divide & rule strategy it can turn members of marginalised groups against each other in unhelpful ways

morbz otm re: gay politics

Dunno if calling gay marriage a symptom of "respectability" qualifies. Two dudes marrying is pretty damn subversive.

Well, it's subversive within the system, but it's still within the system. Which is why, e.g., my old-school radical lesbian separatist friend has very mixed feelings about it. She wanted a revolution, not just accommodation. On the other hand, that revolution was never going to happen -- and a society with marriage equality is a more just society. So she's still happy for the changes, even though she's disappointed by their modest scale.

But if you're going to change the mainstream, you have to assume the mainstream will change you too.

yeah ime the more radical politics gays I know considered difference/deviance from the straight mainstream a virtue, they aren't/weren't interested in assimilation. idk maybe that changes w age to some extent and people get less inclined to fight for sweeping macro changes and more inclined to accept victories that affect them on a personal level.

xp

Two dudes marrying is pretty damn subversive.

Perusing the announcements of same in the Sunday NY Times might make you hedge that.

I think I had a thought about "respectability politics" once that may have been more a thought about politics, which was that, like, sometimes if you do politics good enough, you win something. This was in the context of thinking about an acquaintance from college who was trans and did a certain amount of "respectable" political maneuvering on campus in order to secure authoritative clarification of the gender-neutral restroom regime. (He'd be the first to admit that being a white dude probably helped with that too.)

xp there is also the fact that much of 20th-century american history consists of angry mobs from the "mainstream" revenging themselves upon "separatists" by razing their communities to the ground while police look on... kind of hard not to assimilate under those circumstances

(in this case I am using "assimilate" to mean something slightly different than what I was discussing upthread with DJP, & it may be useful to break this out into some more specific concrete terms; but my head is spinning & I need to eat some lunch before I go to work)

DJP: I'm not sure what the problem is, please enlighten me, I'm being 100% serious

If it helps the position I am trying to argue from is economic determinism -- that no one is going to change the way they speak or dress unless it is worth their while to do so; that the status quo offers little incentive for many people, particularly african-americans, to do this; that to expect someone in this position to prove him- or herself 'worthy of' charitable assistance or government benefits or whatever, after conceding the point that the community he or she comes from has been systematically disadvantaged, is a copout.

― Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Monday, June 8, 2015 11:54 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not to butt into an argument here but i think it needs saying that what is most at issue right now is not the providence of a state service to a community ("assistance/benefits/whatever") but the exercise of state violence on that community.

it is about removing the excuses that allow others to overlook or ignore the reasons why a marginalized group is being marginalized. If you live your life like Heathcliff Huxtable* and you are STILL being pulled over, singled out in airport security lines, denied favorable loan rates or credit, not granted interviews for jobs that you are clearly qualified to do, passed over repeatedly for promotions in favor of people less qualified than you, graded more harshly on subjective exams than your classmates, etc etc etc, the problem is not your attitude, it's not your aptitude, it's not your performance and it's not your behavior. You are making the good people who are oppressing you show their (sometimes unconscious) bias, which can't be as readily ignored or hand-waved.

This is a real meat-grinder of a tactic, though. It can literally cost your life! Or it can cost you your soul--to pile and pile on injustices and watch loved ones fall to the system, watch them hurt others, hurt others yourself--it brings Kiese Laymon's writing very strongly to mind. It's not victimless, not humane, and I'm not sure there's long-term feasability to take this tactic very far. Like, throwing yourself into the machine in case a couple of clueless white people one day notice your sacrifice and "learn their lesson" about 1% of racism? Idk man. The struggle needs all of us, and I'm not sure that's a great use of any human life.

to what extent is respectability politics, in the common usage of the phrase, thought to exclude other overt political action, protest, etc.? pre-civil-rights-movement ppl were mentioned above but i also kind of associate it with, like, mlk, black muslims, etc - in terms of the performance of irreproachability on the political stage

DJP: I'm not sure what the problem is, please enlighten me, I'm being 100% serious

You're saying that a large, indeterminate number of black people have been walled off from mainstream society to the point where they have no idea what the white American conception of social norms are, which a) is horrifically patronizing given how deeply and pervasively those norms spread through American society on all levels, and b) completely at odds with the profiles of the black people who have been murdered over the past several years, who in and of themselves are unremarkable average citizens of this country. The people that you're describing still live in the United States; even if they are poor, they still live here. People who shoplift still know that shoplifting is illegal and they're not supposed to do it. People who sell drugs know they are risking incarceration. The fact that a significant number of people in this country are poor or disadvantaged doesn't mean that they don't understand how this country works; many of them understand all too well.

Again, I'm not arguing that everyone who engages in what could be termed "respectability politics" is doing so as a dare to expose a racist system, but conversely arguing "some people just can't help themselves because no one taught them how to act" is a massively condescending position to take.

This is a real meat-grinder of a tactic, though. It can literally cost your life!

Literally everything can cost you your life, though.

The people that you're describing still live in the United States; even if they are poor, they still live here. People who shoplift still know that shoplifting is illegal and they're not supposed to do it. People who sell drugs know they are risking incarceration. The fact that a significant number of people in this country are poor or disadvantaged doesn't mean that they don't understand how this country works; many of them understand all too well.

― DJP, Monday, 8 June 2015

this thread seems to be at cross purposes because some of it refers to observing legality and what snowy was referring to was 'the way they speak or dress'

Playing in a park with a toy gun? You can get killed.
Listening to the radio at a gas station? You can get killed.
Knocking on a door to get help after a car accident? You can get killed.
Walking to your dad's apartment in the rain? You can get killed.
Driving with a tail-light out? You can get killed.
Buying a BB gun in a store? You can get killed.
Selling loose cigarettes on a sidewalk? You can get killed.
Jaywalking? You can get killed.

The experience of being black in America is that of knowing that at any given second, your life can be taken away arbitrarily for less reason and with fewer consequences than most of the people around you. Given that, any particular way you decide to live your life is a meat-grinder and people should be given the courtesy to pick which one they're going to gingerly hover over and hope the life-line doesn't break.

imo respectability politics as an attempt to ingratiate yourself in the eyes of a dominant group by mimicking their arbitrary cultural/linguistic standards is a dud, which is how i read the simple meaning of respectability (becoming respectable in the eyes of others). otoh my impression is that ppl who push respectability politics are simultaneously pushing virtues that are worthwhile for all humans - politeness + good manners, comporting oneself w/ dignity, working hard, taking care of your family + community, getting an education, etc. i think it's a mistake to pursue those things because you want to fit in w/ a bigoted majority community, but i think those things are valuable on their own.

― Mordy, Monday, 8 June 2015 16:50 (1 hour ago)

this is a good post but it refers to hard social norms with fairly universal ethical appeal and it doesn't cover instances where people follow non-ethical norms for reasons other than ingratiation (for example changing appearances might lessen chances of violence)

Literally everything can cost you your life, though.

― DJP, Monday, June 8, 2015 5:35 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True

xxxxp

This quote from Chris Rock's New York Magazine interview last year comes to mind:

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Two dudes marrying is pretty damn subversive.

Perusing the announcements of same in the Sunday NY Times might make you hedge that.

This epiphany explains why the issue of same sex marriage flipped so quickly in the public mind.

The experience of being black in America is that of knowing that at any given second, your life can be taken away arbitrarily for less reason and with fewer consequences than most of the people around you.

Obviously this should say "... most of the non-black people around you." Accidentally universalizing my own experience there.

As I see it, there are two elements to respectability politics. (nb I can only speak here from my perspective which is as the member of an Orthodox Jewish family and community where many of the men and women wear very particular dress codes, code switch, etc.) There's the way you dress and the way you speak. Someone showed me this recently and asked for my thoughts: http://nypost.com/2015/01/23/israeli-makes-magic-yarmulke-to-protect-jews-from-attacks/ - my first reaction was that the point of wearing a yarmulke is to demonstrate publicly your faith in G-d as a Jew, and so hiding it made no sense. But ultimately I said that if someone wants to wear a yarmulke, but is afraid of being attacked for it, who am I to tell them not to wear this device? I see a lot of these kinds of negotiations, sometimes for the sake of safety (for a Jew in France), sometimes for professionalism. My father dresses well, wears nice clothing, speaks very well, etc. But he also has a beard that goes down to like his waist and he almost exclusively wears white shirts, black pants, and always covers his head. He has had to modulate those things in such a way that he looks professional without undermining his commitment to the way he dresses. Otoh, he would never use a Yiddishism when talking to a client/customer because it would just be silly. You want to engage with the world around you in a productive manner without compromising your own commitments to yr community/faith/beliefs etc. If someone is strongly committed to dressing a certain way, or speaking a certain way, they may have to reconcile themselves to the fact that the culture at large has predetermined beliefs about what is good/bad and they may get a bad response from people outside their community. Otoh, the blame (if that's important) lies entirely with the bigot in the culture who can't talk to someone dressed in a particular way (as an Orthodox Jew, maybe, or as a Muslim, or wearing so-called 'urban' garb). But you have to determine whether you're willing to live with not everyone having a good reaction to you.

The other element of respectability politics are the pull-up-by-the-bootstraps narratives. That communities and people should 'work hard,' 'get educated,' 'support their families,' 'participate in their community,' 'go to church/perform charitable acts/whatever,' etc. I think these are all good things and they should be done for the sake of the people themselves. You can dress however, or talk however, and still do all these things. You may have to work harder to get the same economic opportunities as someone fully assimilated into the culture, but you're not working hard, or getting educated, because you want people to like you more. You're doing it because these are the routes to success. Again, these things don't happen in a vacuum and to the extent you may have to work harder, or to the extent that no matter how hard you work some people will never accept you and you'll never have the same acceptance as someone of a different race/culture/presentation/etc, these are entirely attributable to people being bigots and assholes. But like Schaub says in that piece I linked above - bigots are always going to exist. You're never going to please them.

(multi-xpost before bowing out of the thread)

not to butt into an argument here but i think it needs saying that what is most at issue right now is not the providence of a state service to a community ("assistance/benefits/whatever") but the exercise of state violence on that community.

― goole, Monday, June 8, 2015 5:25 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I see the problems as inseparable: underserved communities have problems with crime, which is then used to justify ongoing neglect of those communities, as working-class blacks become conflated with this criminal underclass in the popular imagination based on a handful of shared cultural signifiers or simple geographical proximity.

You're saying that a large, indeterminate number of black people have been walled off from mainstream society to the point where they have no idea what the white American conception of social norms are, which a) is horrifically patronizing given how deeply and pervasively those norms spread through American society on all levels, and b) completely at odds with the profiles of the black people who have been murdered over the past several years, who in and of themselves are unremarkable average citizens of this country.

Okay, thank you for this. I am mulling it over but I don't think I'm ready to respond yet.

Is "respectability" the aim of a disparaged minority? Is respectability a consequence of assimilation? These aren't rhetorical questions, I hope.

going back upthread for a moment:

so one complaint from the other side, if you don't want to do that for politically strategic purposes, would be to say, why can't i have a politics that doesn't need ME to be the one living in a maximally just way? why is the stoic-style burden MINE?

The thing is, the system is stacked against you regardless of how you behave. It's not like opting out of dressing like a preppy white person automatically makes racism disappear any more than choosing to dress like a preppy white person makes it disappear. The answer to the question is "Because the burden is yours anyway; your choice is how you're going to carry it."

djp otm imo, you can't live your life waiting for bigots to become saints, and apportioning blame properly doesn't change the rl circumstances of yr life.

Is "respectability" the aim of a disparaged minority?

I think "respect" is the aim of a disparaged minority and "respectability" is a tool used by some to show how some people are not granted it.

Would you say that Forest Whitaker plays respectability politics? If not, why was it so shocking and absurd that a deli owner would accuse him of shoplifting a sandwich?

Is respectability a consequence of assimilation?

Homogeneity is a consequence of assimilation. Respectability may be a side-effect of that homogeneity.

I think a form of respectability politics is as entrenched in the minority experience as racism is in the white experience. The question isn't so much whether you decide to engage in it, it's how hard you decide to fight against it. Pretty much everyone from a minority grows up knowing that, whether they like it or not, they are representing their race in the eyes of a large proportion of the majority. If they are perceived to have erred, they err not just as an individual but on behalf of everyone else. Take that on board and it is extremely tough not to hope the other people effectively representing you don't fuck it up.

^^^ OTM

Take that on board and it is extremely tough not to hope the other people effectively representing you don't fuck it up.

otm

The allure of respectability is strong with gays. I played along for a little while after coming out; years after my dad's half brother succumbed to AIDS, I didn't want to be accused of Bad Habits.

It depends how old they are....

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” - O.W.

(of course he didn't "identify" as gay)

Not wanting children or relationships is disrespectful enough.

On a parallel track, the whole Slut Walk/anti-slut-shaming movement is an explicit (and necessary) rejection of a form of respectability politics.

how about pride parades? in their former, less vanilla incarnations

Barney Frank had some choice words about the history of pride parades iirc

Barney Crank

I just finished Frank's (excellent) memoir.

what were his choice words

Doesn't mind parades but has contempt for those who demonstrate and march without calling legislators, knocking on doors, doing the hard work of politics.

iow, politics gets done by the people willing to do politics

has Barn noticed that on the federal level, pols are now 100% unresponsive to sub-millionaires, and that his "landmark" Dodd-Frank reform has been stripped like a Ferrari under an overpass?

^Barney Frank OTM. xp

Obviously women have respectability politics issues too, as we find out whenever there's a well-publicised rape trial.

to an extent, "respectability" has always meant conformance and somewhere at the bottom of the list is "passes as white"

Morbs, threads like this serve as your parade instead of real work.

Dodd-Frank wounded btw but far from dead.

Very much against it, and I don't think of it as a "politics" but as a set of class- and race-based cultural values that are used to exclude people - as in discriminate, segregate, etc. I don't always feel comfortable talking about it because a lot of people who think they are liberal use these cultural biases. For example, the demand that everyone be "nice" and "uncontroversial" and "inoffensive" can mask racial or gender prejudices. Far better socially to accept that none of us are perfect.

So, uh, should we revive this thread or keep the related convo on the other couple/few ongoing American politics ones?

have any of you godless liberal elitists considered that the only reason the DJIA is growing so steadily is so it can reach 45,000 on election day, then 47,000 the day after, to celebrate the once and future potus? bet not!

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, October 16, 2024 10:45 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Would you please shut the fuck up

― DJP, Wednesday, October 16, 2024 11:05 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry sir! thanks so much for telling me to shut the ____ up!! apologies for one more post -- if this is farewell, ILX, i hope kamala wins. if she doesn't, i bet it's the fault of untoward posters like me not getting told off once and for all sooner

I get that constantly doing ironic maga posts is cathartic for you but most of us don't need more of that shit, are exposed to enough of the non-ironic variety, maybe take that onboard?

catharsis seems to me to be in singling me out as especially egregious. sorry! i don't fit in with most you of here, and what you need -- apologies, so long, farewell, and go harris/walz!

Based on the sample of your posts that I've seen I doubt you've accumulated more than 3 FPs from other ilxors, if that. You could ask a mod to tell you. DJP had the FP option, but chose a more confrontational path. But as for staying or leaving, suit yourself. You can always come back when or if you like.

but who else will doggedly remind us of the 2017 news that the White House staff served Trump two scoops of ice cream?

not me? DJP shut me up for good, and i'm sure i deserved it! i've promised to leave and i'm already violating that. nevertheless! a bleeding heart sucker i'm popping back in to shout a sincere oh my god holy shit and good luck to all and sundry under attorney general matt truman show gaetz and national intelligence director tulsi gabbard. art and words fail

Circular firing squad mentality means that "respectability" politics will prevail, as it always does in the blame game.

Which is why I am spending less time online.

I will say those who wield it are often hypocrites who enjoy such things as gangster / drug dealer stories for their entertainment.

xpost Not sure what this has to do with respectability politics tbh

I’m guessing it’s because I started this thread and I’m Black

qualmsley I think it would have been easier if you'd just accepted the feedback and said "I'm sorry, I'll work on that" rather than continuing to post dramatically about it across multiple threads.

not me? DJP shut me up for good, and i'm sure i deserved it! i've promised to leave and i'm already violating that. nevertheless! a bleeding heart sucker i'm popping back in to shout a sincere oh my god holy shit and good luck to all and sundry under attorney general matt truman show gaetz and national intelligence director tulsi gabbard. art and words fail

― reggie (qualmsley)

jesus fucking christ

i haven't been reading ilx much lately so i don't actually have any idea what's going on here, but it sounds like if you got called out, it was for a good fucking reason, and you should deal with it.

-

anyway, respectability politics? opposed. if someone's saying some ignorant racist bullshit, why the fuck should it be the responsibility of the person on the receiving end of that to tell them that in terms that, like, don't _hurt the feelings_ of the person saying ignorant bullshit? god. it's fucking ridiculous.

for that matter, like, why should it be the responsibility of the person on the receiving end of the racism at all to tell someone that they're being racist? i'm kinda trying to feel this out myself as someone who's a beneficiary of white supremacy, cuz i don't always understand perfectly or get things right. i've said and done a lot of ignorant racist bullshit in the past, and i'm trying to learn. i do think it's important for those of us who are beneficiaries of white supremacy to hold _each other_ accountable for racist words or actions. if i do that wrong, though, _i'm_ not the one who gets held responsible for my mistakes... it's Black people (often collectively) who get held responsible. i fucking hate that.

very open to critical feedback on this!

there was a good episode of Dear White People where one of the more politically active members of the group, Reggie, decides to let it go for one night and just have fun at a party. and then they're all vibing to a hip-hop song where the N-word is part of the chorus and his white friend raps along and says the word, and Reggie bristles a little and grins and says "don't say n***a", softly, with the demeanor of "hey you might not even have known this was not acceptable, so just make sure to avoid this in the future".

all his white friend needs to do is say "Oops, I'm sorry, I'll do better next time", but he just can't accept the feedback, he acts like he's being called a racist, and that being called a racist is like being called a racial slur, and he starts pushing back (progressively more aggressively over time). Eventually, he of course crosses a line (I don't remember what it was exactly) to where Reggie says "well now I *am* calling you a racist" and then of course a fight breaks out, the cops get called and Reggie winds up on the ground, with a look on his face of "why is this always the end result?".

fiction, yes, but how I've seen it play out in public over and over again. even when Reggie WAS respectful in the way he gave his feedback, he received unnecessary hostile escalation from the dude. a transgender Black friend of mine is constantly dealing with supposed allies who are chummy with her until she calls out a faux pas and they freak the fuck out at her...so I understand why she's basically said "I'm done being nice".

(that being said, I'm not immune to committing some of these same mistakes, as a privileged white male)

(that being said, I'm not immune to committing some of these same mistakes, as a privileged white male)

― Joe Boudin (Neanderthal), Monday, November 18, 2024 11:47 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's the thing, right? recognizing that we're not immune and that "racist" on a _personal_ level is about words, is about actions, not an essential part of who we are as _individuals_. fucking... when people talk about "white fragility", that's how i understand it, we take stuff as a _personal judgement_ when it's not. i mean how fucking hard is it to say "if you're white, don't say the n-word, there's no such thing as n-word privileges"? how hard is it to understand that, like, if I tell you, Neando, that it's OK for you to call me a faggot (it's not OK for you to call me a faggot, for the record, nor do I think you'd call me that even if it was OK), that doesn't give you blanket license to call any queer person a "faggot"? i mean i assume you know that, but so many people, they got this mythical idea of "n-word privileges". i mean, the bar is in hell, right?

at the same time it's recognizing that people have a right _to_ make personal judgements of me. if someone believes i'm a racist on a personal level, i mean, that wouldn't be a baseless accusation! i've tried to learn more, to confront my own internalized racism, but i'm still ignorant in a lot of ways. i figure i probably still do or say racist stuff without realizing it. if someone calls me out on that, yeah, that feels shitty, but at the same time i'm grateful, because how the fuck else am i going to learn? to me, that tv show bit (which, yes, does happen all the time) reminds me that a Black person calling me out on my racism is taking a real risk in doing so. if someone trusts me enough to fucking be honest with me, that means a lot more to me than whether or not they're _respectful of me_ in how the express their criticism.

I’m guessing it’s because I started this thread and I’m Black

― DJP, Monday, November 18, 2024 11:06 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

i had no idea you're Black! i apologize for any hint of racism! i bumped this thread last month because i felt singled out by you in the tragic devastating run up to Trump beating Kamala

erring on the side of overstepping, i bid farewell again!