Summary Of No Disrespect: Black Women By Marley Winfrey Harris
796 Words4 Pages
In the article by Tamara Winfrey Harris, “No Disrespect: Black Women and the Burden of Responsibility,” she discusses the effects of respectability politics towards minorities, specifically black women. She discusses how respectability politics is negatively impacting black women, by accepting it. It shows white Americans a different version, a stereotype, of black women. One that is not entirely true and made of age old racism. I agree with Harris that respectability politics is actually destructive because it denies ones culture to give satisfaction to the dominant culture. Because respectability politics can either be viewed as either positive or negative, in Harris’s case: negative, an inherent problem of it, is that minorities, or the group in discussion, black women, who do respectability politics are seen as being compliant to the dominant culture, or as…show more content… The attraction being that there is a chance to be liked and to be approved of. The attraction that minority groups and black women, who have been disliked and hated for years, can now assimilate in to the dominant culture and be applauded for it. They are now being accepted into the dominant culture and who doesn’t like being part of the in crowd? Respectability politics is a well meant and intended idea, for it gives minorities and black women, the ability to represent themselves as they truly are, without anyone else’s opinion on how they are. It creates a chance for Black women to appear more, to show America, that they are not just a country full of white, and others. That the others have a voices, opinions, and careers. But is respectability politics actually working to change white America? No, for it only a limelight on those in the media to do what white America wants them to do, which is to fit into a