In the respectability argument I hear echoes of Bill Cosby's criticism of black youth who wear saggy pants and speak Ebonics. He conveniently forgot the language used by the characters in his hit television show "Fat Albert and the Gang," which I thoroughly enjoyed as a child. I believe there is a dialect that is appropriate for the courtroom and for some sectors in the market place, in that it may have greater utility, but it doesn't make any form of communication more inherently valuable or respectable than any other. According to many British folks the whole of the American version of English is slang.
In my opinion, there is a difference between appropriateness and respectability. I tell my 13 year old son that he should dress appropriately (e.g., not wear the same thing to a school dance that he would wear to a basketball game). Behaving in a respectable manner is a racialized norm, and though one could argue that appropriateness has a normative aspect as well, it seems more cued to context than to some quantum of inherent value. What is respectable in this society seems to be determined by how closely one approximates white, Christian, straight, middle class, maleness. This discussion and Professor Audrey McFarlane perspective (with which I wholeheartedly agree) reminds me of several lines from Sister Nina Simone's classic Mississippi Goddam:
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
I strive to be appropriate in the spaces I occupy and behave strategically to achieve desired ends. But knowing (as Professor McFarlane and Sister Simone note) that no matter what I do I am deemed inherently "not respectable" is liberating and frees me to define myself in terms that reflect the values and experiences of my ancestors, rather than those of the oppressor.
— Professor Tanya Washington, Georgia State College of Law