Respectability discourse loaded black women with responsibility for the whole race
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 (
#qualifies, via linked claim)
If Jacks hoped to silence Wells and her sisters, then his plan backfired. By the summer of 1896, inflamed Black club women had united under the banner of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) to defend Black womanhood, challenge discrimination, and lend power to self-help efforts. But some, if not most, of the self-help efforts of these mostly elite reformers encouraged the assimilation of White women’s mores. They were based on the same old historical racism that said that low-income Black women had been morally and culturally ruined by slavery. “Lifting As We Climb” became the NACW motto. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 727 (
#expands, via linked claim)
And the anniversary of the Brown decision and discourse on Black education invariably brought out the racist ideas about what was wrong with Black parents. No one was better suited to that task than Bill Cosby, who had once been considered the model Black parent during the run of The Cosby Show. “The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting,” Cosby said in Washington, DC, after being honored at an NAACP gala in May 2004. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1189 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
- XREF: connects to: Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 923; Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1541; Devaluation of black women was a deliberate method of social control — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 191 (+3 more)
Related
- Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition (similarity 0.85)
- Elite Black women’s self-help efforts reproduced racist views of poor Black women (similarity 0.82)
- Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression (similarity 0.81)
- Black respectability figures can become chief producers of racist ideas (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition
#qualifies(0.85) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1541 - Black respectability figures can become chief producers of racist ideas
#expands(0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1189 - Elite Black women’s self-help efforts reproduced racist views of poor Black women
#expands(0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 727 - Devaluation of black women was a deliberate method of social control
#complicates(0.75) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 191 - Black women urged self-governed institutions rather than white-defined approbation
#expands(0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 337