Equality movements require the strategic display of worthiness to gain rights

Evidence

In and of itself, a movement demands respectability. The demand for equality necessitates the appearance of seeming equal and, therefore, worthy of respect. This, in part, is how a century’s worth of gains were achieved: through the refulgent, relentless, strategic display of worthiness. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1128

Categorization

• XREF: This causal claim about respectability driving rights-gains grounds the reader’s own case study of how protest movements self-present; connects to the complaint-moral-panics article. — connects to: The Declaration’s equality promise was made legally operative only through later social movements — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 355; Respectability campaigns overlooked the structural inequalities they could not overcome — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 981