Respectable behavior was deliberate political strategy, not unconscious Bourdieu-style concession.

Evidence

From the perspective of the Woman’s Convention, polite behavior on Jim Crow streetcars and trains did not constitute supine deference to white power. Nor did politeness constitute unconscious acts of political concession, as Pierre Bourdieu’s oft-quoted analysis would otherwise have us believe. … On the contrary, the politics of respectability constituted a deliberate, highly self-conscious concession to hegemonic values. While deferring to segregation in practice, adherents of respectability never deferred to it in principle. The Baptist women’s emphasis on manners and morals served to reinforce their sense of moral superiority over whites. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 883

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges Bourdieu’s theory of politeness as embodied habitus reproducing domination — a concept central to other books in this library. — connects to: Black Baptist women infused words like respectability with their own meanings through self-definition — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1541; Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 923; Respectability reformers shifted from redeeming sinners to forming character early — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 817 (+8 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts a famous theoretical framework by showing a subaltern group weaponizing respectability as deliberate, conscious strategy rather than unconscious reproduction.

Broader Connections

• Institutional fit, not sincerity, makes political conduct feel natural. #contradicts (0.85) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1277
• Habitus-driven action is necessary passion, not chosen responsibility. #corroborates (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 468
• Manners function as instruments of social control, not mere decorum. #corroborates (0.75) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 63
• Modern liberal governance rules through strategic self-discipline, not force or consent. #corroborates (0.75)
• Victim cooperation was itself a rational strategy, not a lapse of judgment #corroborates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 398
• Limits on political confrontation are political choices, not moral or rational requirements #corroborates (0.72) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 428
• Colonial ignorance theories trace back to Memmi and Bourdieu’s two-category framings. #responds-to (0.70) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1337