Letter to Hazel Carby

Dear Hazel Carby,

I enjoyed reading your article, “Policing the Black Woman’s Body in an Urban Context,” and I was particularly interested in your analysis of the Phillis Wheatley Association. You bring up a very important point: that efforts toward “racial uplift” so often were focused not on improving people’s lives, but on improving people’s images. People like Phillis Wheatley cared little for the happiness or material comfort of her subjects, so long as they “conform[ed] to middle-class norms of acceptable sexual behavior” (747). It seems that this directly fed the culture of dissemblance – when outward appearances mattered more than personal well-being, the path of least resistance for Black migrant women was to put on a brave face, adhere to middle-class norms, and accept that which was socially difficult and inexpedient to change.

I think this plays into today’s respectability politics, too. Too often, discourse around racial uplift centers on shaming and curtailing behaviors associated with poor or working-class Black Americans. As in the era of the Great Migration, the lives of impoverished people do not improve by adopting middle-class norms, and yet, the adoption of these norms is seen as both a means to an end and the end in itself. As you point out, this is a dangerous and unhelpful view. When appearances are prioritized over people’s lives, people’s lives cannot improve. Instead of shaming and blaming victims of an oppressive system, we must fight to undermine and change the system.

Sincerely,

Molly Culhane