R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me

Apr 28, 2025

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“Respect” means dignity, recognition, and being treated as an equal. Aretha Franklin sang this lyric in 1967, and its meaning still holds true today.

That’s all well and good, but what in heck are you talking about?

Without respect in all its meanings, our interaction in our transactional society is continuously subject to false information and judgments on those we meet and interact with.

We see these false impressions every day. The district judge who oversteps authority to bar the President from doing his job just doesn’t comport with our impression that judges are fair and unbiased. We may be disappointed by the county justice of the peace who makes decisions based on his or her belief or directions from the county judge or a donor. These actions, instead of fulfilling the promises made to get elected, are voting his choice instead of the wishes of the majority of his constituents. Maybe worst of all is the voter who casts their ballot for a fool because of a celebrity endorsement.

You can call it honesty or avarice or any one of a multitude of personal defects; however, it all comes down to respect or lack of it. That some judges don’t respect the limits of their office, that elected officials make promises they (and you) know they won’t keep, or the voter who does so little research they believe every BS story they hear are all cases of a lack of respect, for the office, the voter, or the freedom to vote.

When someone rejects your opinion out-of-hand, they’re disrespecting your ability to think. They probably have their own opinion on the matter, and maybe have even spent a lot of time researching and thinking about the issue. Finally they’ve looked at “all” the possibilities and arrived at a decision, only to have you show up with something they didn’t consider and shake their opinion to the core. There are only two things they can do.

They can reopen their inquiry to determine if you’re correct or they can dismiss your contention as bogus and maintain their own hard-won belief. Think of what you’d really do in this situation, and that’s probably the response you’ll get if you’re the one making waves. And remember, if you disregard an opinion out of hand you’re disrespecting the person who communicated it to you.

Then there’s that whole thing with dignity, which directly refers to a person’s worth as a human being or a sense of self-respect (there’s that word again) and pride in a person’s behavior or character. Think about how you’d feel if someone made it known that you as a person have no worth. Hear it often enough and you might start believing it.

The classic example of this is that the systematic denial of respect and dignity during slavery has had a deep, lasting effect on the Black community in America. Slavery stripped individuals of autonomy and humanity, and not just physically, but psychologically. Sensitivity to perceived disrespect isn’t an overreaction—it’s often rooted in centuries of survival. To a lesser extent this same sensitivity to being disrespected exists in most cultures in which there is a wide separation between the haves and have-nots. Not showing respect in an early 20^th century Italian immigrant community could be a death sentence. The same care for individual dignity was also a big part of the Irish community around the same time. Both Italians and Irish had an upper class that was widely separated from the common citizen.

Then we have “not treating people as an equal” as a lack of respect, which it is. Every person has worth, and all are supposedly equal in the eyes of the law. It doesn’t work out that way in many cases, but it’s supposed to be the rule. We’re not talking equality of outcome, but that each has an equal chance to succeed.

One popular trope is that women are not equal to men. From the point-of-view of the law, nothing could be further from the truth, and from the viewpoint of intellect women are superior to men. Men on the other hand are more physically aggressive and stronger than women. It all evens out when you allow men and women to do what they’re best at. Women are not weak, timid, porcelain dolls and men are not Rambo. Reality is somewhere in the middle, and each brings out the best in the other.

We all suffer from another debilitating condition. We tend to equate worth and knowledge with celebrity. How many times have you seen a celebrity on TV telling you that you must hug trees or support some other charity or convert to some green fever dream and thought “I never knew (add celebrity name) knew anything about nuclear physics.” The sad truth is they don’t. John Wayne wasn’t a Green Beret and Sylvester Stallone wasn’t Rambo. John Wayne was actually a football player whose career was cut short by an injury, and Sylvester Stallone cleaned cages in a zoo before acting. They played a part and that’s all. They were and are actors, pretty good at their craft, but I wouldn’t take strategic or tactical directions from either of them. I enjoy their performances, no more.

In these (celebrity) cases, it’s false respect – we’re respecting the character they play in a movie, or their ability to play football or baseball or whatever other sport you fancy. Meet any of these people on the street and be prepared to not be impressed. Our expectation is the persona of the celebrity, and not the person hiding inside.

The simple truth is that respect, in all its permutations, has a lot to do with all our lives.

In the Shootist (1976), his last film, John Wayne said “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”