The Vision | Being an angel saved no one

Respectability politics will not save us from our nation's lethal history of police brutality

By Nikki Hardison 09/09/14 9:33pm

W h ile Darren Wilson has not been formally indicted in the shooting death of Ferguson teen Michael Brown, a trial of another sort has already begun to take shape among the American public — the trial against Michael Brown’s character. On the eve of his funeral, New York Times columnist John Eligon wrote an expose on the teen’s life describing him as “no angel.” Despite Brown’s promise as a recent high school graduate and his nonexistent public record, the media has searched for every detail that would prove the Ferguson PD’s narrative — that Michael Brown, unarmed, was an inherent threat to his community.

Within the black community, another discourse has also emerged to uncover why these unarmed shootings continue to occur. In the wake of the George Zimmerman trial and murder of Trayvon Martin, CNN host Don Lemon held a segment on what he believed to be the most prominent issues for black Americans. Instead of noting the institutionalized racism and power structures within our nation’s political, economic and justice systems, Lemon elaborated on the “real” issues, such as the need for blacks to “pull our pants up” and “stop littering.”

While Lemon’s views may seem irrelevant to the structural challenges that many people of color face, his segment is a clear example of the emerging belief and support of respectability politics. This ideology holds that if minorities would simply “respect themselves” by adopting the social and cultural standards of the dominant class, then and only then would they be privy to the full benefits and “respect” of all American society. This fallacy is not only wrong in that it puts the onus of racism on those stripped of power, but it is also elitist in its belief that pulled-up pants and collegiate degrees will somehow protect one from legalized suspicion and police violence.

The myth of respectability as a cure for racism is reflected in the daily experiences of black students here at Penn. While the blatant discrimination of the prior decades has lost its prominence, there are still the subtle micro-aggressions that reinforce the sentiment that “you are not supposed to be here.” From being stopped and questioned by Penn Police to being frequently asked to show one’s PennCard at campus frat parties, these reactions to black students’ presence on campus show that regardless of how “respectable” an Ivy League student may be, brown skin can at any time deem one a threat.

While the question of how to prevent police brutality against people of color persists, what must be clear is that respectability politics will not adequately address the core of this issue. In the same vein that telling women how to dress and act will not prevent sexual assault, we cannot propagate the belief that pulling up our pants or not listening to hip-hop will be enough to save us. It won’t.

Historically, cases such as Michael Brown’s and Trayvon Martin’s are not new and remind us that these injustices are historically cyclical. In 1955, teenager Emmett Till was lynched while visiting family in Mississippi on suspicion that he flirted with a white woman. His gruesome death shocked the nation and was a launching point for the civil rights movement.

His mother Mamie Till Bradley notably said, “Two months ago, I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, ‘That’s their business, not mine.’ Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”

Regardless of the respectability standards placed on people of color, we are all deserving of justice, due process , and most of all, respect. Michael Brown did not die because he wrote hip-hop lyrics, wore baggy clothes or simply didn’t “respect himself” enough. Darren Wilson gunned him down because his very presence elicited an excessive fear and therefore excessive force by the police.

Let this tragedy be a reminder that despite the fact that we all, by definition, are “no angels,” some of our lives are colored and continue to be less valued than others.

Nikki Hardison is a Wharton senior from Buford, Ga. Her email address is chardi@wharton.upenn.edu. “The Vision” appears every Wednesday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.