Black Community Uplift and the Myth of the American Dream
By (author) Lori Latrice Martin author of Racial Realism and the History of Black People in America
Publication date:
26 October 2018Length of book:
156 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
232x159mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498579155
The book uses the politics of respectability concept as an appropriate framework to show why racial disparities between black and white people in America persist. The politics of respectability originated with black Baptist women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sadly, the politics of respectability is under utilized and often confused with respectability politics. The book using the politics of respectability to examine three important myths: the myth of the American Dream, the myth of America as a meritocracy, and the model minority myth. Additionally, the politics of respectability is used to understand #BlackLivesMatter and recent NFL protests led by Colin Kaepernick.
In Black Community Uplift and the Myth of the American Dream,Lori Latrice Martin makes masterful use of quantitative data and sophisticated conceptual analysis to recover the 'politics of respectability' as a conceptual framework for helping us to think about why the putative American dream remains out of reach for most African Americans. Martin argues that much of our rejection of the historic notion of the politics of respectability focuses on only one aspect, the aesthetics of individual behavior and acceptability as a means of appealing to the dominant social group and, therefore, as a vehicle for social mobility. Much of the scholarship on social movements reduces the idea to 'respectability politics,' which is a flat and individualized trope for unacceptable social behavior and personal presentation. This is not the same thing as politics of respectability for Martin, who sees the ideas of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Baptist women for whom the concept is named as much more complicated. Contemporary critiques obscure the structural engagement advocated by politics of respectability, such as boycotts, protests, and verbal and written remonstrances against the structures of racism. The politics of respectability reminds us that racism is structural and that the focus on individual behavior and proper conduct leaves these structures unmarked and in place. Embracing an accurate view of politics of respectability can actually aid our analyses and remind us that racism is a set of deeply entrenched structural realities that render racism, rather than class, the primary barrier to attainment of the 'American dream.' Martin uses quantitative evidence to demonstrate this beyond any doubt. Social scientists, intellectual historians, scholars of religion, and others who are interested in the relationship between the history of ideas, their popular appearances, and their conceptual recovery in service of new modes of research and analyses will be excited about this book.