Black Community Uplift and the Myth of the American Dream

In Black Community Uplift and the Myth of the American Dream, Lori Latrice Martin makes masterful use of quantitative data and sophisticated conceptual analysis to recover the 'politics of respectability' as a conceptual framework for helping us to think about why the putative American dream remains out of reach for most African Americans. Martin argues that much of our rejection of the historic notion of the politics of respectability focuses on only one aspect, the aesthetics of individual behavior and acceptability as a means of appealing to the dominant social group and, therefore, as a vehicle for social mobility. Much of the scholarship on social movements reduces the idea to 'respectability politics,' which is a flat and individualized trope for unacceptable social behavior and personal presentation. This is not the same thing as politics of respectability for Martin, who sees the ideas of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Baptist women for whom the concept is named as much more complicated. Contemporary critiques obscure the structural engagement advocated by politics of respectability, such as boycotts, protests, and verbal and written remonstrances against the structures of racism. The politics of respectability reminds us that racism is structural and that the focus on individual behavior and proper conduct leaves these structures unmarked and in place. Embracing an accurate view of politics of respectability can actually aid our analyses and remind us that racism is a set of deeply entrenched structural realities that render racism, rather than class, the primary barrier to attainment of the 'American dream.' Martin uses quantitative evidence to demonstrate this beyond any doubt. Social scientists, intellectual historians, scholars of religion, and others who are interested in the relationship between the history of ideas, their popular appearances, and their conceptual recovery in service of new modes of research and analyses will be excited about this book. -- Stephen C. Finley, Louisiana State University
Martin’s Black Community Uplift and the Myth of the American Dream is a beautifully written combination of historically nested constructions of race, gender, class, and national identity paired with contemporary intellectual inquiry into the alienation of Black Americans that results from these constructions. A telltale sign of Martin’s razor sharp intellect is the powerful distinction she makes between the politics of respectability and respectability politics. The fact that the text historicizes these often conflated, misused, and highly contested concepts provides readers a true sense of the complexity of how American society evolved into the polarized state that critical scholars lament today. It is most noteworthy that Martin delivers a sophisticated analysis of a controversial topic in a manner that is equal parts engaging and accessible to the both academic and non-academic readers. -- Roland Mitchell, Louisiana State University