Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition

Evidence

Elizabeth A. Meese illustrates the dialogic quality of words in her discussion of the discursive negotiation between black and white feminists over conflicting representations of race, class, and sex. Extending her discussion (and specifically the following quote) to the study of black Baptist women permits a clearer understanding of the role of black women in the process of self-definition and in infusing words such as respectability and equality with meanings and intentions of their own. Meese writes: “Speakers designate me as they wish, to suit their intentions and interests. Unless | speak myself, language will not serve me, and only then does it throw me and the other(s) into a negotiating relationship so that we can bargain with each other and with language over our shared property, our respective investments in signification.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1541

Categorization

• QUESTION: The dialect of ‘self-definition’ against language imposed by others is the core mechanism of respectability politics worth tracing.
• XREF: connects to: Respectable behavior was deliberate political strategy, not unconscious Bourdieu-style concession. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 883; Blacks experienced white surveillance as panoptic, driving total self-regulation. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 900; Black Baptist women held a double consciousness of simultaneous separateness and alliance — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 390 (+6 more)