Why Respectability Politics Is Oppressive, Even On T.V.

Like most American women, I was a big fan of Sex and the City. So when HBO greenlit the reboot called And Just Like That, I wanted to like it. Truly I did. But after seeing the season two premiere, I just can’t do it.

One of the major issues for me this season, among other things, is the respectability politics storyline for the Lisa character, played by Nicole Ari Parker.

In the season premiere, Lisa’s mother-in-law is an older, “respectable” African American woman. She is a beautiful wealthy member of the AKA sorority who makes digs at Lisa’s outfit for being too African, expects her daughter-in-law to appropriately braid her granddaughter’s natural hair, and reprimands her son (Lisa’s husband) after he reacts in anger to being unable to hail a cab. Though Lisa rolls her eyes at her mother-in-law’s comments about her clothing, she dutifully braids her daughter’s hair and joins her in upset about Herbert’s reaction to the racist cab incident. They both essentially tell Herbert t…