respectability politics
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.82 in modern English
35
Scrabble Score
22
Letters
6
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as being compatible with mainstream values, rather than challenging the mainstream for its failure to accept difference.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "A greater understanding of respectability politics, particularly in the Progressive Era, and an appreciation for the pervasiveness of debates about respectability within the African American community are two important insights regarding African American politics and reform to come out of the recent scholarship."
- "Although some of these rites contradict the notions of respectabiilty among Black American women I introduce in chapters 2 and 3, they also socialize women into commonly held characteristics—parables of character that I outline throughout the chapter as reminiscent of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century respectability politics."
Etymology
Coined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in 1993 in reference to African-American women who modified their behavior to appease whites.