The Politics of Respect.

SELF-esteem; SOCIAL justice; ACTIVISTS; SOCIAL change; GROUP identity; SOCIAL psychology

The article discusses the significance of collective respect in discussions about social justice. Respect and disrespect. and their corollaries of high and low self-respect, have not been prominent in the political language of the U.S. Respect is important because it has consequences for what happens economically, socially and politically to people with particular social identities. Political and social movements do sometimes pay attention to respect, but they seldom use it as an analytic category that brings together a variety of questions. But respect is not generally a category of analysis, a way of understanding social justice, that is considered as crucial to our identities as how much money one earns or where he lives. Legally sanctioned and enforced rights are basic, but respect plays a crucial role in the development and implementation of rights. Whether and how rights are enforced are affected by the respect accorded to a given group. The fact that some individuals are told they are "different" and therefore more "acceptable" than other members of the group hardly mitigates against collective disrespect for a given group.