I've been a fat girl all my life. So I know what it's like to feel the need to prove that you are worthy [of love, respect, attention, friendship, common decency-take your pick]. I spent a lot of years trying to prove exactly that.
Since the news of "shithole countries" has come out, I have watched Haitian Americans, African immigrants, El Salvadoreans, and Africans still on the continent trying to prove that their countries are not "shitholes" or that they (and their families) are worthy of being in the United States (or not being looked down on by the United States). And it has made me so heartbroken. Knowing that their pleading is all for nothing. Because the one thing I know from my time going through this is that, if you are a member of a minority (or any out- group), there is nothing you can say, nothing you can do, no amount of education you can have, no way to present yourself, etc. etc. to make you respectable enough to the majority (or the in- group).
Welcome to the world of respectability politics. Where people on the outside of the circle try to prove they are worthy of something that should, by any and all measure, be their birthright. Where people are losing their lives because it can never be proven; the drawers of the circle will always change the boundaries to make it so.
If you want to understand why I talk about white supremacy the way I do; this is why. I don't want anybody else to have to feel like I did as a fat, black girl; unworthy of the things that are necessary to living a full human life.
Respectability politics puts the onus on those who are oppressed to show that they are worthy of things that are human birthrights. Respectability politics saps the energy for the things that give life. In short, respectability politics are evil. And evil needs to be called out always.
that's it.
