Respectability discourse blames victimized blacks, especially women, for their own discrimination

Evidence

As the caretaker of the home, ergo the caretaker of the race, black mothers were charged with the responsibility of maintaining disciplined and clean homes. The failure to do so, however, left black mothers ultimately accountable for contributing lives to the “bad” and for “every discrimination we suffer.” Respectability’s emphasis on individual behavior served inevitably to blame blacks for their victimization and, worse yet, to place an inordinate amount of blame on black women. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 923

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pinpoints how the respectability frame’s individualizing logic leads to victim-blaming, a key internal tension of the coined concept.
• DEEPTHINKING: The internal critique — that the very politics of respectability blames the oppressed for their oppression — is the load-bearing, counterintuitive heart of Higginbotham’s concept.
• XREF: connects to: Digressive victimhood deflects discrimination accusations onto an unrelated topic — Felix Danbold, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, and Miguel M. Unzueta, Dominant groups support digressive…, 24; Respectable public self-presentation contested racist stereotypes of black women — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 878; Respectable conduct functioned as self-defense against sexual assault for black women — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 891 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression #corroborates (0.98) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 923
• Respectability discourse loaded black women with responsibility for the whole race #expands (0.85)
• Treating race as a form of ethnicity enables blaming the victim. #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 702
• Targets of prejudice often cooperate in their own victimization through paternalism #corroborates (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 140
• Casting discrimination’s victims as having been degraded by it is itself racist #expands (0.78) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 21
• Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition #complicates (0.77) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1541
• Victims of discrimination adapt through either externalization or internalization of blame #expands (0.76) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1048
• Black respectability figures can become chief producers of racist ideas #complicates (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1189
• Respectability politics mobilized working-class blacks toward racial self-help #qualifies (0.75) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 94