What are they, and are other people/races/groups bound to this, and are they harmful overall? Who gets to decide them?
Respectability politics is that quiet pressure Black folks feel to look, act, and talk a certain way just to be seen as “acceptable.” It’s the message we get growing up: speak clearly, dress neatly, don’t be too loud, don’t draw attention. But these rules weren’t created by us—they were created as survival tools in a world built on racism.
In the Jim Crow era, they were a strategy. Be twice as good, work twice as hard, and maybe, just maybe, you’d be safe. But now we know that performing respectability doesn’t protect us—it just teaches us how to shrink ourselves. This study breaks down how this performance can actually reinforce harm rather than reduce it.
The reality is, white people don’t have to worry about respectability. They can show up as themselves—good, bad, or messy—and still be seen as individuals. But when a Black person steps out of line? It’s suddenly a reflection of the entire race.
Respectability becomes a tool of control. Black voters are told to support “safe” candidates. Black entrepreneurs are judged not just on their ideas, but on how they look and speak. In the Black business marketplace, we’re often asked to tone it down, clean it up, or “present better” just to be taken seriously. But who gets to decide what’s “professional” or “credible”? Why do we keep adjusting ourselves to fit in with standards that were never built with us in mind?
It’s not just the outside world, either. We’ve internalized these messages. We tell our kids to behave, to not be too loud, not because we want to—but because we’re scared of how society will treat them. We shame each other for being “too much” when really, we should be freeing each other.
Here’s the problem: respectability has never stopped discrimination, violence, or injustice. It hasn’t stopped us from being denied loans, jobs, or access to spaces of power. It hasn’t created safety. What it has done is slow down progress.
Instead of trying to be “acceptable,” we need to focus on what really matters: ownership, creativity, and access to Black business funding. We’ve got people building powerful platforms, creating wealth, innovating culture—and they’re doing it by being authentic, not by shrinking themselves.
If we want to build real Black wealth, we need to stop performing and start owning. Owning our voice. Owning our space. Owning our power.
Respectability isn’t the path to liberation. It’s a distraction. And we’ve outgrown it.
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