Middle-class respectability politics simultaneously attacked working-class idleness and upper-class hedonism.

Evidence

The Woman’s Convention identified with the black working poor and opposed lower-class idleness and vice on the one hand and high society’s hedonism and materialism on the other. The convention’s class sympathies, especially with regard to domestic servants, found concrete expression in the National Training School for Women and Girls, which the WC established in 1909 to win respect for black women in menial employment. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 857

Categorization

• XREF: The double-front stance against both idleness and hedonism echoes how reform movements critique both the poor and the decadent rich. — connects to: Black middle-class respectability politics rejected lower-class cultural expressions as immoral. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1176; Libertarian sexual ideology spread by leisured elites degrades working-class habits — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1114; Respectability politics created status hierarchies inside the black working class — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 930 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Black middle-class respectability politics rejected lower-class cultural expressions as immoral. #exemplifies (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1176
• Upper-class nonconformity to work ethics blocks disciplining the masses. #expands (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1128
• Respectability politics created status hierarchies inside the black working class #expands (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 930
• Libertarian sexual ideology spread by leisured elites degrades working-class habits #complicates (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1114