Respectability Can't be Earned

Respectability politics – be they dressing as the “anti-thug” for colored boys or the virgin demeanor for women of all ages– boil down to the same thing…a desire to feel safe, the illusion of control. I can’t be mad at Kendrick Lamar. Not really. Irritated, yes, but angry? It isn’t that their stance that sagging pants or exposed midriffs don’t do harm…respectability politics are extremely dangerous. Respectability politics provide cover for awful behavior, giving excuses to “overzealous” police and “boys being boys”. It is the language that confuses productive conversation about real issues, leading people down wayward alleys that have very little to do with the problem at hand. Fashion is not at the root of racial or sexual violence. But even knowing how the conversational misdirect adds to existing problems, it is difficult for me to muster lasting anger when the people who are most impacted by it recite it like a protective mantra. I see their stance as an overwhelming desire to feel like they can control the uncertainties of the world around them, a world ready to assume they are dangerous or an object meant only for sex. 

The brutalization of black men by the police has caught the attention of the American masses these days. With the ubiquity of chronicling every moment of our existence through photos and video, we are able to see the brutal pixelated possibilities of our lives and the lives of those we love. Creatures of survival, we want to know how to avoid ending up like Tamir Rice or even Martese Johnson. We go back to survival instincts, to the simplicity of squirrels and deer and our most basic selves – we freeze, waiting to see if we have been spotted by a predator, we are looking for our camouflage, the blind spot in the pursuer’s gaze so that we can survive another day. Survival is the reason that black parents (and I suspect colored parents in general) cloak their children in the rules. It is why they tell us to be twice as good to get half as far and to remember that we can’t do what everyone else can do. It is the reason they tell our boys to wear a belt. It is about safety. 

But that safety is all a mirage. It doesn’t exist. 

When we tell our girls not to dress too provocatively or risk being called a slut. When we question why a woman was at a club or walking home or whatever it is she was doing to “get herself raped” than we are enacting the very same illusion of safety. Some women cloak themselves in it. “I would never go to a frat party so that would never happen to me.” With geography as predictor of sexual violation the belief is that it is something that can be avoided with vigilance and “good sense”. Only, acts of injustice don’t play by agreed upon rules. No rapist sees that a woman’s skirt hits just below her knees and so passes by for the woman with hers hitched up an inch above. Not to mention it cloaks the reality that 82% percent of rapes are not from strangers but people we know. Society at large is so fixated on a fallacy of control that we bestow the mantel of sexual “virtue” on our girls – making anything that happens to them their responsibility. That screams unfair, but we want to believe that that unfairness will keep us from victimization and so some people cling to it, virtue as the ultimate protector.

Injustice happens for a lot of reasons but clothing is seldom the driver. But if we can cloak ourselves in the belief that what we wear matters, that an inch of cloth above the waist for black men or below the knees for women, then we are not bogged down by possibility that our humanity could be violated. If we can blame the victim than we can examine what that victim did wrong and be sure to avoid those steps. Only, it doesn’t work that way.

The other issue with respectability politics is that it strips people who don’t follow them of their humanity, of their right to live without fear of danger or violation. It says that if you are not a college student with impeccable grades, if you have had casual sex, if you drink alcohol or do drugs, if you dance provocatively, if you wear a hoodie, if you make someone else feel any kind of way other than safe and uninterested…then you deserve what you got. You somehow asked for it. 

And how can that be ok? How can we have so little humanity that we follow rules that deny someone the most basic of rights if they show any signs of imperfection? We are all flawed. We all make mistakes. Our mistakes should not leave us bereft of protection or undeserving of empathy. If anything, our imperfections should gather us together in understanding. “I’ve been there.”

Instead, we look at people who have made life choices we, perhaps, would not make, and we are smug and self-righteous. We are cruel and unforgiving. Ignoring the cherub-faced photo of Trayvon Martin that circulated so widely when he was initially murdered – it was soon replaced with imagery of him with tattoos and looking more adult. People had coded names for what he looked like to them – “thug”, judgements about what they assumed he was like. Other people pushed back, calling the indictments of “thug” slander and thinly-veiled racism. 

Racism set aside a moment, why does it matter? Why does it matter if a victim of a crime smoked weed, got arrested, showed cleavage or had a lot of sex? Should it matter at all?

When Ramarley Graham was murdered in his home allegedly trying to flush a packet of weed down the toilet – does that make his life less important? Illegal and immoral actions don’t mean someone deserves whatever they get…bad decisions don’t’ nullify the rights we are born into under the laws of this land. At least they shouldn’t. 

Too often we ask the wrong questions. Instead of looking at what the victim could have done differently we should perhaps look at what the perpetrators should have done differently. Instead of Trayvon’s hoodie, attention should be focused on Zimmerman’s gun and willful ignoring of police instructions. Instead of focusing on what a rape survivor wore or where she wore it, focus should be brought to why her “no” was ignored, why her attacker felt justified in violating her body. 

Respectability politics are a flimsy shield for the frightened, something held up in fear with hope that it can withstand the bombardment of a world that is neither fair nor predictable. Respectability politics are an empty promise of an attacker…”I promise not to hurt you” but they renege every time and all that is left is the victim blaming anytime someone falls short of the perfection respectability politics demand for empathy to be deployed.