Marginalized groups recode dominant symbols with their own meanings.

Evidence

Caroline Bynum argues similarly with regard to the appropriation and interpretation of symbols: “Even when men and women have used the same symbols and rituals, they may have invested them with different meanings and different ways of meaning.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1359

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives Bynum’s concise principle underwriting the author’s reading of how Black Baptist women reworked the same patriarchal Christian language toward their own ends.
• XREF: connects to: Oppressed groups reclaim power by rearticulating their own stigmatized signifiers.; Subordinate groups historically reversed self-derogation into positive in-group identity and militancy — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2695; Adopting a derogatory label as one’s own identity can transform oppression. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 694 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Oppressed groups reclaim power by rearticulating their own stigmatized signifiers. #expands (0.93)
• Adopting a derogatory label as one’s own identity can transform oppression. #exemplifies (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 694
• Subordinate groups historically reversed self-derogation into positive in-group identity and militancy #exemplifies (0.88) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2695
• Targeted groups cope with denigration by drawing on their own cultural patterns #expands (0.78)
• Respectability politics can both empower and imprison a marginalized group #complicates (0.74) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1128