In her timely book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes, "The killing of Mike Brown, along with an ever-growing list of other unarmed black people, drove holes in the logic that black people simply doing the "right things,' whatever those things might be, could overcome the perennial crises within Black America. After all, Mike Brown was only walking down the street. Eric Garner was standing on the corner. Rekia Boyd was in a park with friends. Trayvon Martin was walking with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea." Black men, women, and youth were vulnerable when engaged in the most benign acts, which illustrated that any and every black person in America could be similarly targeted. Being an exemplary citizen offered no safeguard from the prospect of police violence. Respectability, and the politics that sang its praises, offered no protection.

XREF: Connects to broader discussions of respectability politics and their limits in addressing systemic racism.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 428