Respectability politics converted menial work into skilled identity rather than merely outward manners

Evidence

Professionalizing domestic servants epitomized the Baptist women’s politics of respectability, since it constituted an effort to re-define and re-present black women’s work identities as skilled workers rather than incompetent menials. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 964

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives a precise, non-trivial definition of the coined term: respectability is not manners but the re-presentation of work identity as skilled.
• DEEPTHINKING: This quietly redefines the usual caricature of respectability as assimilationist manners — here it is a class-conscious strategy to dignify black women’s actual labor, resisting the traps of both idle luxury and self-contempt.
• XREF: connects to: Respectability reformers shifted from redeeming sinners to forming character early — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 817; Labor is means-oriented while aristocratic ethos centers on personal being — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 515; Western pioneer men displayed crude domestic manners as a badge of identity — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 27 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Labor is means-oriented while aristocratic ethos centers on personal being #expands (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 515