Black middle-class respectability politics rejected lower-class cultural expressions as immoral.

Evidence

I was fascinated by the calypso singers and the sometimes ribald ditties they sang in their tents during carnival time. But, like many of the black middle class, to my mother a calypso was a matter for ne’er-do-wells and at best the common people. I was made to understand that the road to the calypso tent was the road to hell, and there were always plenty of examples of hells inhabitants to whom she could point. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1176

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to William James/class reproduction themes and to Fanon’s analysis of the colonized middle class. — connects to: Class-privileged blacks could themselves face exclusion from the respectability project.; Middle-class respectability politics simultaneously attacked working-class idleness and upper-class hedonism. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 857; Respectability reform clashed with and disavowed poor black folk culture — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 96