The Politics of Respectability and Black Americans’ Punitive Attitudes

Abstract

Existing research largely ignores Black support for punitive policies that target group members, even as this support challenges expectations of in-group favoritism and group solidarity. The current research fills this gap by leveraging a familiar concept: “the politics of respectability.” Building on historical and qualitative accounts of this worldview, which focuses on the behavior of group members, I develop a social psychological framework to understand how identity-based concerns motivate Black support for punishment that targets members of their racial group. I also develop a novel measure of respectability–the Respectability Politics Scale. Findings demonstrate that adherents of respectability feel more ashamed about the public view of their racial group, endorse more negative racial stereotypes, and feel relatively less close to other Black people. They are also more likely to support a range of punitive policies that target group members, including restrictive dress code policies, tough-on-crime policies, and paternalistic welfare policies.