Dissenting from the Critique of "Respectability Politics"

Last year Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, in "Lifting as We Climb," defended "a sensible respectability politics." The rap on "respectability politics" is that it is dysfunctional, meaning that it asks members of minority groups to feign mainstream appearance, manners, speaking habits, boring personalities, etc.

In some cases skepticism about lack of respectability reflects warranted distrust of those manifesting dysfunctional cultural traits.

Critiquing a cultural trait which attacks those who pursue an education for "acting white" isn't about respectability politics, it is legitimate distrust of behavior which impedes becoming a functional member of modern society.

Randall Kennedy does not discuss the relationship of the Marxist objection to "bourgeois morality" to respectability politics discourse. This objection was part of Marx's wholesale opposition to the norms, ethics, and manners of liberal democracy. In this context the objection to respectability is the objection to the 21st century skills, education, standards, and deportment needed to prosper in and enjoy the resources of a wealthy first world nation.

Below, selections from Kennedy's long article. He emphasizes Martin Luther King's and Thurgood Marshall's use of respectability in the civil rights campaign. He notes Ta-Nehisi Coates' flawed logic in rejecting Obama's advocacy of good behavior (Coates tends to argue(1) that all problems of marginalized groups are the result of racism). Kennedy concludes that respectability's appeal to young black men and women to invest in themselves "will pay dividends in the future."

Randall Kennedy:

Defenders of a sensible black respectability politics — I am one of them — do face real challenges. “Respectability” has served at times as a harbor for bigotry or for the complacent acceptance of racism. Moreover, what should count as disreputable conduct has been subject to serious debate.

Then Kennedy argues that the appearance of respectability is an important civil rights tool (just as looking well is important in an employment interview):

Any marginalized group should be attentive to how it is perceived. The politics of respectability is a tactic of public relations that is, per se, neither necessarily good nor necessarily bad. A sound assessment of its deployment in a given instance depends on its goals, the manner in which it is practiced, and the context within which a given struggle is being waged. Its association with esteemed figures and episodes in African-American history suggests that the politics of respectability warrants a more respectful hearing than it has recently received.

Recall the dignified black teenagers who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, while bands of snarling, foulmouthed white hooligans sought to torment them. Remember the determined activists who demanded service at segregated lunch counters while screaming white thugs doused them with ketchup and mustard. ... James J. Kilpatrick, the racist journalist who fiercely opposed the civil-rights movement ... expressed grudging admiration for the youngsters who carried off the sit-ins with such splendid tact. In some circumstances it is effective and praiseworthy to scandalize the arbiters of established opinion, to give the finger to the powers that be. No movement in American history practiced a more honorable politics than the abolitionists, even though they often luxuriated in incivility. I am not defending observance of conventional propriety as a timeless principle. I am simply saying that there are occasions when deploying respectability can be useful and ought to be done.

Dr. Kennedy continues to the next item in his argument: "failings by blacks" (whose importance, as we shall see, Ta-Nehisi Coates rejects):

[Barack Obama] criticizes the constraints that blacks encounter because of past and ongoing racism, and, to the extent that it is feasible, he supports policies that he believes will provide relief. But he also openly identifies failings by blacks — parental absence, negligent nutrition, destructive criminality, inadequate civic engagement. And he demands that African Americans, individually and collectively, do more for themselves.

Randall Kennedy cites Coates' objection:

Critics of black respectability politics objected to this speech vociferously. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote:

Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people — and particularly black youth — and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that “there’s no longer room for any excuses” — as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of “all America,” but he is also singularly the scold of “black America.”

Charging that the Morehouse graduation speech fit into a pattern of “convenient race-talk,” Coates asserted that surely black Americans “have earned something more than targeted scorn.”

This response [by Ta-Nehisi Coates] is strikingly tendentious. It implies that any criticism of blacks by Obama nullified every other feature of the president’s address. His speech was primarily celebratory, as one would expect and hope for at a graduation. Obama congratulated Morehouse for “the unique sense of purpose [it] has always infused — the conviction that [it] is a training ground not only for individual success but for leadership that can change the world.”

Dr. Kennedy concludes by noting that “respectability” is about such functional matters as education, skill, competence, and work ethic. These are not political. Only practical:

As brutal and frustrating as our era can be, however, day by day it offers more racial decency than any previous era. At no point in American history has there been more overall freedom from antiblack racial impediments. At no point has there been more reason for young black men and women to be hopeful that investing in themselves will pay dividends in the future.

(1) Coates, 2014, Charles Barkley and the Plague of Unintelligent Blacks:

The notion that black irresponsibility is at least part of the "race problem" is widely shared among black America's most prominent figures, beginning—but not ending—with the president of the United States. ...

Respectability politics is, at its root, the inability to look into the cold dark void of history. For if black people are—as I maintain—no part of the problem, if the problem truly is 100 percent explained by white supremacy, then we are presented with a set of unfortunate facts about our home.