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I was a college freshman the first time I heard the term, “respectability politics.”
Considering I attended a 99 percent white parochial elementary and middle/high schools in the south, it’s no surprise I didn’t know what it meant. Today, I remember the definition a classmate shared with me during my freshman year, as we strolled to a fashion show sponsored by the Black Student Union:
It’s when we have to behave a certain way to convince everyone who isn’t black that we’re safe and normal and worthy.
Dictionary.com calls respectability politics:
. . . [T]he set of beliefs holding that conformity to socially acceptable or mainstream standards of appearance and behavior will protect a member of a marginalized or minority group from prejudices and systemic injustices.
Recently, upon reading about a 4-year-old black boy in Texas who was taught by his school district that his beautiful, shoulder-length hair was inappropriate, I thought of these definitions—both the formal and informal.
Under the guise of maintaining “standards” for orderly hairdos, which apparently prevent Rick-and-Morty-adventure-level chaos, officials in the rural Tatum Independent School District told Randi Woodley that her grandson Michael “Tink” Trimble needed a haircut.
Woodley pointed out that the district granted hair-length exceptions to transgender students, so why not little Tink? But, she alleges, a district administrator said that if Tink’s hair mattered that much, Woodley “could put him in a dress and have her grandson tell others that he was a girl.”
Young Mr. Trimble, though he probably doesn’t realize it yet, was sucker-punched by respectability politics.
Ruth Terry wrote brilliantly recently in Human Parts, “The Art of Being Black in White Spaces.” But if there was a disproven, debunked opposite to that art, blatant quackery, it would be respectability politics.
For any who would dismiss the term and those who decry it as an overreaction and melodramatic, let’s reflect a bit, ’cause this war for control over what acceptable blackness looks like isn’t new or recent.
Booker T. Washington publicly argued — however eloquently or well-intentioned or wrongheaded — that if only black folks would behave, speak well, and generally carry themselves “humbly,” they would ensure a devil’s bargain for economic opportunity, ensure their communities’ safety and foster peace with white Americans. To which Jim Crow responded, psych!
Conditioning: Be nice! Speak well (without the ethnic or cultural-linguistic affect of the continent from which they were fewer than 10 generations removed). Be respectful (read: subservient). And we’ll all get along!
In his 1883 memoir Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain shared an anecdote about the alcohol tastes of black riverboat passengers. Twain observed that when black passengers went to the bar and requested the best stuff, they were often taken aback that the top-shelf booze was clear and “plain.” Twain wrote that black passengers would scoff at the clear liquid and demand the most colorful stuff, which was usually the cheapest and lowest quality.
Presumably, these recent-former slaves had been so conditioned to drabness, they thought that brighter meant better. Think Django and his royal blue Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. Still, if they wanted to drink the bright stuff they should have been able to drink the bright stuff, without being treated like Philistines for it. You don’t have to be an anthropologist to read between the lines that the people Twain wrote about had been conditioned to accept as good and tasty what they were told was good and tasty, rather than explore, experiment, and hone their own palates.
Fast-forward to the early 1960s, when black artists and their male fans were scarring themselves from coast to coast by getting “fried, dyed, and laid to the side,” AKA “conked,” AKA burning the hell out of their scalps with heavy-duty perms and chemical hair straighteners.
From Nat King Cole to the Temptations, black men got conked because straight hair was neat. Straight hair was hip. Straight hair was what the most popular (white) male entertainers of the day wore. Straight hair was…normal.
So, the logic was that with straight hair, the likes of Cole, Otis Williams, and the fellas, would appeal just a smidge more to white audiences by embracing the norm.
Let that sink in. Their golden singing voices alone weren’t enough to ensure that appeal.
In 2001 black FedEx employees sued the company after they were ordered to cut their dreadlocks or be fired. Apparently, their hair caused packages to be lost and delivered to wrong addresses. Sarcasm. But seriously, have you ever cared whether your express delivery driver had Ken doll hair or not? Me either.
News just broke that a white New Jersey high school wrestling referee, who’d previously made disparaging and questionable remarks about African Americans, has been suspended from umpiring that sport for two years after he forced a multiracial boy with dreadlocks to choose between cutting his dreadlocks or forfeiting a match. The wrestler, Andrew Johnson, who has balked at being cast as an icon in an ongoing civil rights fight, allowed his locks, which the referee had deemed unnatural, to be snipped. Unnatural for whom?
For centuries, black and Black-ish men and boys have been told their lots in life would be set if they will only embrace “normal.” But most of our instructional manuals left out the page explaining how “normal” is defined and by whom.
We kids of the 1980s and newly minted young adults of the ’90s were taught that while the Fresh Prince himself was charming with his humorous edge if we really wanted to get anywhere in life we’d be better off channeling cousin Carlton.
How can we forget that February 2007 day when on the campaign trail, then Sen. Joe Biden said of then Sen. Barack Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Translation: He’s normal, therefore, he’s A-OK!
Back in the day, high school authority figures insisted to me that only bad or suspicious people get pulled over by the police, etc., etc., etc. Be “normal” they said, and you’ll be fine. Look normal, they said. You’ll be fine. Wear your pants high enough. Speak “well,” keep that bass out of your voice and say “golly” a lot, they said. You’ll be fine. Don’t play “that” music when you drive, especially with your windows down. Keep your hair close-cropped and “neat,” they said. You’ll be fine.
And then I started getting pulled over for inexplicable, non-codified traffic violations. And they said…nothing.
I’m teaching my son that “respectability” means embracing his skin and his hair and his voice and his body as is or as he wants them, and me, on his behalf, telling anyone who tries to coax him to think otherwise to go and fornicate themselves with a rusty pipe dipped in poison ivy puree. When he’s closer to grown, we can debate freedom to look however you want…and the workplace. I mean, I’m not gonna lie. Call me a hypocrite. But God forbid I ever need a criminal defense attorney, I want him to look like Paul Robinette or Perry Mason (and my attorney’s investigator to look like Mrs. Marple) because, unfortunately, juries are people too.
But the principle stands: Blackness is not a commodity, a fashion or style to be adapted to whichever direction the morality police claim the wind blows or the delicate sensibilities of the general public.
I’m encouraged that boys like Tink have grandmothers speaking up for their authenticity. But those voices need to be part of a national chorus that, in unison, denounces once and for all the wink-and-a-nod idea that black men and boys can’t realize normalcy until they concede the presentation of their bodies.
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This post was previously published on Medium and is republished with permission from the author.
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