A Respectful (But Not Respectable) Dissent Against Black Respectability Politics

In an article entitled “Lifting as We Climb: A Progressive Defense of Respectability Politics”—which appears in the October 2015 issue of Harper's Magazine—Professor Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School defends what he terms “a sensible black respectability politics.”  The term “respectability politics” typically refers to efforts by groups who are marginalized (Kennedy focuses on African Americans) to show that their values and behaviors are in concert with the mainstream (White Americans here), and that they are not threatening to the prevailing norms of mainstream society.  Professor Kennedy acknowledges many problems with respectability politics and admirably tries to come to terms with these.  Nevertheless, he emphasizes the positive dimensions of respectability, and he concludes that “[a]t no point has a progressive black respectability politics made more sense” than today.

Although I respect Professor Kennedy’s intent and efforts here, I find several shortcomings in his analysis.  First, Professor Kennedy does not adequately distinguish between the consequences of private dialogue on respectability—the conversations that Black parents and elders have with children in their homes and other private spaces—and public respectability discourse perpetuated by prominent figures—most notably President Barack Obama.  While the former may well be appropriate, the latter is harmful because it serves widely to marginalize African Americans, by reinforcing negative racial stereotypes in the public sphere. 

Second, Professor Kennedy misses the nuances of President Obama’s use of public discourse on respectability.  I argue that President Obama himself does not reflect the negative stereotypes of African Americans held by many White people.  His upbringing was very different from these stereotypic images, and his public persona is counterstereotypic in every sense—a hallmark of Black exceptionalism.  Although Obama has faced and continues to face different forms of racism, this does not mean his experiences growing up in Hawaii equate with those of African American youth living in impoverished, highly segregated communities on the mainland.  It is admirable that President Obama can identify with the struggles faced by African American communities and lend assistance to activist efforts—as for example, when he humanized Trayvon Martin by noting that his son would look like Trayvon.  However, in the context of Black respectability, Obama’s comments serve to chastise African Americans who have faced different challenges than him.

Third, Professor Kennedy does not acknowledge the internal dissonance that successful African Americans already feel and that respectability notions tend to exacerbate.  African Americans who are successful often have to decouple their identities from the negative stereotypes of Black communities that pervade White America.  By doing so, they also feel more distant from these communities.  Respectability plays a role in this process, which creates an internal dissonance among many upwardly mobile African Americans.  W.E.B. Du Bois famously wrote about this dilemma for African Americans in his 1903 classic, Souls of Black Folk, where he described the “peculiar sensation” of “double-consciousness”—that “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”—and feeling one’s “two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body[.]”  Professor Kennedy’s discussion of Black respectability is incomplete without addressing this dilemma.

Because respectability involves creating divisions within Black communities, I question whether it really means “lifting as we climbing” or if it is “climbing on the backs of others.”  As such, I respectfully (but not respectably) dissent from Professor Kennedy’s thesis.

— Vinay Harpalani, Savannah Law School

A longer version of this commentary appeared in Black Commentator – Issue 623 (October 01, 2015)