The harsh truth is that 'respectability' is the exorbitant tax we African Americans are forced to pay daily as we try to live out our versions of the American Dream.
Interpretation
Respectability is a burden imposed on African Americans in their pursuit of the American Dream.
This quote highlights the societal expectation for African Americans to conform to a certain standard of respectability in order to gain acceptance and success in pursuing the American Dream. It suggests that this pressure acts as a heavy tax, complicating their journey and often demanding more effort and sacrifice than is asked of others.
In practice
In a discussion on systemic racism, this quote can illustrate the challenges faced by African Americans.
Isn't it sad that really the only times I feel seen as an American are when I'm abroad? I'm not saying racism doesn't exist outside of the United States. What I am saying is that the rest of the world can see that I'm American. Why is it so hard for so many White Americans?
Caught in a racial uproar, people make all sorts of promises to make amends. Whatever they do tends to be heavy on symbolism and light on lasting change.
When you're Black in the United States, you grudgingly grow accustomed to having people deny that your existence is integral to everything that makes this country what it is.
There are still too many instances of police neither protecting nor serving LGBTQ and other marginalized communities. But the response shouldn't be to ban LGBTQ police from a parade.
Scapegoating is as American as apple pie. And because there's almost always a racial or ethnic dynamic to it in our country, scapegoating is the evil cousin of white supremacy.
When you're Black in America, you spend a lot of time counting firsts. The higher the first, the more we marvel (and shake our heads at how long it took to happen.) The higher the first, the more the person who achieved it comes to represent how we want the nation to see us.
You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others.
there was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth⦠there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations
For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.
First and last follow each other.
Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it is not enough to say "I am doing no harm," I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.