Black middle-class advancement sharpened cultural divisions within black society

Evidence

As educated black women took places of leadership beside black men, their number augmented the ranks of the black middle class and heightened growing cultural differences within African American society. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 224

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Respectability crusades unwittingly reinforced the very stereotypes they fought. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 894; Black communities and families resisted Spelman’s Victorian reform ideals as divisive — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 199; Educated black leaders policed a cultural divide against folk religious practice — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 226 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Black middle-class respectability stigmatized calypso as lower-class degeneracy #exemplifies (0.90)
• American racism fused Black people into one mass preventing internal class divisions #contradicts (0.85)
• Colonial education defined Black middle class status by cultural deracination and European fluency #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 861
• Colonial education made deracination the price of Black middle-class status #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 861
• Colonial education produced a deracinated Black middle class serving as intermediaries. #corroborates (0.80)
• Rising black middle-class incomes fostered women’s pursuit of idealized femininity #expands (0.70) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 514