It's ********. It's basically middleclass/rich white people telling everyone else that they need to conform and act like ~*a civilized person*~ (aka reject their culture) while promising equal treatment, except marginalized people are still treated like **** even after they take up white standards of living. It's avoid for white people to avoid racial/socioeconomic conflict without addressing/trying to fix any of the issues.
Depends on how you understand "respectability politics."
In disability circles, for example, a lot of people talk about "respecting" people with disabilities. The problem with this intention: respect does not necessarily equal equity, better lifestyles, or more fruitful opportunities for disabled people. Rather, it folds disabled people into life into the mainstream economy of what it means to have a disability and able-bodied-ness. In this context, respect is fruitless; it does not really tackle the systematic and symbolic inequities disabled people face. Here a more good and helpful politic would be absorbing disabled people in the mainstream -- yes -- but with a radical attention to their/our points of view, so that the mainstream can be challenged. I think a lot of respect(ability) talk results from the mainstream. A more fruitful approach to disability would be centering the lives (and deaths) of disabled people in the main stream or centre of ideas, ideals, and actions.
If you mean the idea that certain behaviors need to meet a level of "respectable" based on societal expectations and social mores for different marginalized groups to gain upward mobility, then yeah, it's trash.
It's mainly used as a silencing and policing technique on marginalize folks.
