What’s Good: Miley, Nicki and the Politics of Respectability

Respectability in a nutshell.
Image via Flickr user Alan Tarkus.

In my work on lynching plays, I have spent a decent amount of time pondering whether or not theater (and art in general) can save us: from actual violence, from our failings, from ourselves. And the simple truth is that I have no idea what will save us, but I have learned unequivocally what won’t: 

Respectability politics will not save us.

Respectability politics, as defined by Mychal Denzel Smith in The Nation, is “the idea that one can overcome racism (or any other form of oppression) by way of your personal actions, presenting one’s self as a citizen worthy of respect as defined by the dominant cultural norms and standards” — that if marginalized peoples behaved correctly, they will be given access to all the privileges that remain perpetually out of reach for them. Angelina Weld Grimké wrote the play Rachel in service of that argument to present Black humanity and its destruction under lynching to White audiences.

According to the Washington D.C. Public Library:

Alain Locke, in Plays of Negro Life (1927), said of Rachel, ‘Apparently the first successful drama written by a Negro and interpreted by Negro actors.’ And the NAACP production program said of the play, ‘This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relating to the lamentable condition of ten millions of Colored citizens in this free republic.’

Forty years after Rachel was produced, Emmitt Till was lynched. An eloquent plea written by a Black child of privilege commissioned by the leading race-based organization of the time and sanctioned by the first African American Rhodes Scholar could not save the life of an innocent 14-year-old boy with a four-decade head start. It does not get any more respectable than that and it failed. Yet we continue to believe that good behavior will save us.

It will not. It cannot. It has not.

Contemporary manifestations of this conversation are everywhere, but one needs look no further than this weekend’s Video Music Awards (VMAs). While this pop culture spectacle is an annual petri dish of nonsense, the VMAs can serve as a diorama of our contemporary moment. Both Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus embody problematic representations, however, Cyrus took it upon herself to tone police Minaj in The New York Times. At the VMAs, Minaj responded and was called a “savage” in Salon — one of the less subtle pieces ofcoded racist language in the lexicon. While it can be argued that each woman’s problematic elements are more or less equitable, racism as an institution allows the “newspaper of record” to minimize Cyrus’ negativity while magnifying Minaj’s.

Minaj is the anti-Rachel: “rude,” “savage,” “hypersexualized” and unapologetic. She is often maligned for refusing to engage with a dominant narrative that wishes to dismiss her unless and until she is more respectable. But what is respectable? And who gets to decide? Why do any of us think we’re qualified to make that decision? While I don’t always agree with Minaj’s choices, I admire her argument: none of us get to dismiss the humanity or validity of anyone else just because we’re uncomfortable with how they behave.

This was further highlighted for me in the comments of Scott Walters’pieces regarding “Cellphone-gazi” and performance decorum. The tone of many of the comments boiled down to

“Sophisticated audiences do not interfere with great art, and unsophisticated people should confine themselves to other spaces.”

One of the arguments I believe Walters was making is that we have redefined what this means throughout the ages so there is no such thing as objective sophistication. I want to further argue that racism, sexism, heteronormativity, ableism and any other form of powered exclusion have informed whom we include when we define sophistication or respectability. Whenever any of us are policing the behavior of another, we have to be willing to recognize how we are informing a narrative of exclusion.

So, what does a counter response to respectability politics look like? As I said in the beginning, I’m not certain that there exists one right answer, but I do have some suggestions for challenging the narrative individually and institutionally:

• Recognize that all opinions are subjective regardless of the number of people who agree.
  • Standards of etiquette count as opinion.
• In recognizing that all opinions are subjective, own yours as such.
  • “I prefer to watch theater without cell phones” is different from “No one should experience theater with cell phones.” Your preferred experience may not be someone else’s and both can be okay.
• Be mindful of asking others to adapt in ways you are unwilling.
  • Miley, when you want to engage honestly around your cultural appropriation I’ll be happy to discuss Nicki’s tone.
• Try to understand the message before you dismiss the messenger.
  • Ignoring a valid argument because it isn’t packaged “correctly” is willful ignorance at its finest.
• Acknowledge that asking someone to behave better so that you don’t mistreat them, particularly if you may have already mistreated them, is an act of violence.
  • No matter how benign the language may seem, the threat is clear: act like you belong or you will be harassed/dismissed/ignored/harmed.

Respectability politics trick us all into believing that we can objectively determine someone’s value based on parlor tricks and window dressing. I challenge us all to consider alternate ways to engage with each other and our art without perpetuating false hierarchies and structural inequalities.

In short, audience: what’s good?

Post originally appeared in The Clyde Fitch Report on September 3, 2015.

I have things I want to say about Bill Cosby.

I have things I want to say about Bill Cosby. They are this, in order:

• I believe he is a rapist.* He is clearly a rapist.
• I think The Cosby Show and his contributions to the collecting and documenting Black-American and African Art are unparalleled in their impact.
• I know, for a fact, that terrible people can make beautiful things.

If there is a way to create retribution for the women he hurt, I am in full support of it. However, I wish to stop short of destroying or removing his artistic legacy. Because that legacy showcased the work of artists and performers of colors on a massive scale. That complicated legacy also allowed us to turn a blind eye when people we collectively deemed unworthy tried to point fingers.

We are all implicated. Heroes don't actually exist.

That is to say every person we deify without accountability gets bolder, abuses more, believes themselves more powerful until they are committing atrocities with impunity. In creating "heroes" we remove humanity, and actually create monsters.

And every time we get comfortable victim-blaming, we create space for these monsters to create more victims. We create Daniel Holtzclaw. We create Darren Wilsons and George Zimmermans and Daniel Pantaleos. We create Mark Wahlberg. We create Eldridge Cleaver. We create Bill Cosby.

Every time we collectively create blind spots, we reinforce power imbalances. We let white men kill black men; we let men rape women; we let rich plunder poor. All of us.

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

The snowflakes are all of us as individuals bound together by the momentum of racism, sexism, patriarchy and their brethren. Racism punishes the Black and Brown monsters we've created more harshly and wholly than their white counterparts. Racism brings a man back from the grave to admonish his unfaithful son while laughing at the boys-will-be-boys antics of Charlie Sheen. It is removing the statue of a great entertainer who is the worst kind of person from a park named after a great visionary who is also the worst kind of person.

Our hypocrisy is showing.

As we righteously tear down a terrible man who used every resource at his disposal to prey on women solely because he had so many resources at his disposal, I would like us to not celebrate too much in the task. We have literally built mountains to men capable of much of the same evil and greatness so we are not the impartial arbiters of morality we seem to wish we were.

Mount Rushmore/Credit: Dean Franklin  

We create monsters then selectively choose which to capture: we are both Dr. Frankenstein and the pitchfork-wielding mob. As our actions continue to cycle from deifying to vilifying, I ask that we pause to consider what systems we're reinforcing. Let's ask ourselves:

Are we attempting to erase his impact on popular culture as a gesture to override our conscious discounting of the women who accused him in the first place?

Are we really okay with removing Cosby's statue from a space which was made to recognize entertainers while we send our children to schools named after Confederate leaders and slave owners?

Does punishing Bill Cosby make you feel better?

How can it when there's so much left to do?



*I originally started this post months ago, when the allegations surrounding Bill Cosby resurfaced. The revelation of his own admission and the sheer amount of life that has happened between last October and today has prompted me to revisit it.

Previously posted on MOGUL.