Respectability politics

Common card · No. 274186

Respectability politics, or the politics of respectability, is a political strategy wherein members of a marginalized community will consciously abandon or punish controversial aspects of their cultural-political identity as a method of assimilating, achieving social mobility, and gaining the respect of the majority culture. The term "politics of respectability" was coined by historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in 1993. According to her, respectability "emphasize[s] reform of individual behavior and attitudes both as a goal in itself and as a strategy for the reform of the entire structural system of American race relations." Respectability politics is also the process in which privileged members of marginalized groups settle within the social norms of the dominant groups, to advance their group's position. Early examples of respectability politics were organizations such as the Association of German National Jews or the German Vanguard, during the Weimar Republic and the early years...

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