Do All Black Lives Matter Equally to Black People? Respectability Politics and the Limitations of Linked Fate

Abstract

Cathy Cohen’s (1999) theory of secondary marginalization helps to explain why the needs of some members of Black communities are not prioritized on “the” Black political agenda; indeed, some groups are ignored altogether as mainstream Black public opinion shifts to the right (Tate 2010). However, the contemporary movement for Black Lives calls for an intersectional approach to Black politics. Its platform requires participants to take seriously the notion that since Black communities are diverse, so are the needs of its members. To what extent are Blacks likely to believe that those who face secondary marginalization should be prioritized on the Black political agenda? What is the role of linked fate in galvanizing support around these marginalized Blacks? To what extent does respectability politics serve to hinder a broader embrace of Blacks who face different sets of interlocking systems of oppression, such as Black women, formerly incarcerated Blacks, undocumented Black people, and Black members of LBGTQ communities in an era marked by Black social movements? We analyze data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to assess whether all Black lives matter to Black Americans.

TRENDS:Racial Resentment and Public Opinion across the Racial Divide

“…A recent body of literature from sociologists and political scientists on black Americans' intragroup attitudes suggests that over time, blacks' explanations of inequality have shifted from structural to individual attributions (Hunt 2007;Nunnally and Carter 2012;Smith 2014;Tate 2010). While some scholars argue that this shift in attitude stems from the moderate and deracialized opinions of black elites and politicians (Tate 2010), others suggest it is related to age and cohort effects: black people raised in the Jim Crow era are more likely to attribute inequality to structural barriers, while those raised outside of that era are more likely to blame individual actions for inequality (Hunt 2007;Nunnally and Carter 2012;Smith 2014; also see Lopez Bunyasi and Smith, 2019, for an excellent discussion of respectability politics and its emphasis on individual behavior over structural inequalities).…”

How Blackness Matters in White Lives

“…Third, there is contentious debate over BLM's goals, methods, and efficacy. Bunyasi and Smith (2019:181) show how “the recent rise and development of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement and the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) have served to highlight several important, persistent points of division in mainstream twenty‐first century Black politics.” In particular, they point to the politics of respectability and intersectionality as contemporary fissures. Moreover, Makalani (2017:529) demonstrates the tensions endemic to some of BLMs claims regarding the normality of state racism on the one hand, and the “language of liberal‐democratic redress: increased black electoral participation, more black elected officials in local government, more black police officers, and white recognition of black humanity” on the other hand.…”

The Distinctive Political Status of Dissident Minorities

“…While they certainly come in for criticism, and that criticism may even be made with specific reference to "Jewish values" or other appeals to community norms, they are not typically viewed as traitors or imperiling any sort of cohesive narrative of solidaristic Jewish politics. This difference in the treatment of dissenters delineates a practical distinction between "consensus issues"-those which "are understood as … advancing the interests of the entire … community" and are "more likely to be 'owned' as community issues meriting group political mobilization," versus "secondary" issues of marginalization-those concerns issues faced by discrete subsets of a disadvantaged group that do not typically register on the collective group agenda (Cohen 1999;Lopez Bunyasi and Smith 2019).…”