In her classic song "Respect," Aretha Franklin asks the listener to "find out what it means to me." According to the dictionary, respect is "a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements." This matches the "definition" of respect most of us learned as children: respect is something that is earned, not given.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with respectability politics. People of color do not need to earn anything. We deserve to be respected simply because we are breathing human beings on this planet. There should be no other requirement to obtain respect in this society.
To be certain, Professor Kennedy is correct that respectability politics played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement. However, it is worth noting that nearly all of the examples of successful uses of respectability he cites are from that era. Professor Kennedy ignores the fact that when the song changed from "Respect" to "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," the entire mentality of the African-American community changed. No longer were Black folks willing to prove to the majority that they deserved respect. Professor Kennedy implicitly acknowledges this when he notes that an entire movement was built in Ferguson around the death of Michael Brown. While he's right that such a thing would have been unthinkable in the Civil Rights Era, the fact that #BlackLivesMatter exists is a testament to the fact that Black folks no longer require the victim to be pristine to demand justice on his (or her) behalf.
Because Professor Kennedy overlooks the Black community's rejection of respectability politics, he misses the key point. It is the WHITE community that continues to insist that people of color demonstrate their worthiness. This demand is not explicit, but it can be seen in the patterns of racial polling. There is a perception among many whites that people of color are dangerous. In many, many surveys, it has been shown that a significant number of whites continue to believe that African Americans (as well as other racial groups) are less hardworking than whites, less trustworthy than whites, or possess any number of bad qualities. Because of this bias, whites and Blacks view events differently. Black victims of white violence are held to impossible standards. Let's look at some recent incidents.
First, when it comes to police brutality, any crime is a dangerous one. While the African American community was outraged when police officers were not indicted for the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City, most whites agreed with the decisions. Many whites seized upon Brown and Garner's petty crimes to justify their opinions. Shoplifting and selling loose cigarettes are not capital crimes, but in the minds of many whites, those minimal actions justified their belief that the killings were necessary. A respectable, law-abiding person wouldn't have been attracted the attention of the police, right? Perhaps if Brown and Garner had been praying in church when killed, their deaths would have generated more sympathy from whites. But should the standard for a basic human right – the right not to be killed by a police officer for a petty crime – be set so high?
Second, even when the police aren't involved, Black innocence is attacked. When Trayvon Martin was killed, many whites complained that the image of Trayvon portrayed in the media was not the "real" Trayvon. An entire campaign arose to discredit him, mentioning details as minute as the fact that he used curse words in social media posts. When the verdict was delivered, a majority of whites polled agreed with the jury's decision. It appears that there's a confirmation bias problem – any piece of information that allows whites to confirm the belief that a Black person is bad will be used for that purpose. Trayvon Martin could have been wearing a three-piece suit and whistling Vivaldi, but those markers of respectability would have been negated upon learning of his "true" nature.
Whose responsibility is it to change the way these whites think? Those that engage in respectability politics – even the most mild form that Professor Kennedy endorses – are basically saying that it is the responsibility of African Americans to make whites change their minds. But it it contradicts every concept of human dignity to think that one group of people should have to prove their worth to another before being deemed worthy of the ability to go about their daily lives free from both public and private violence. African Americans must respect ourselves enough to reject any claims to the contrary.