Respectability reform clashed with and disavowed poor black folk culture

Evidence

On the other hand, the effort to forge a community that would command whites’ respect revealed class tensions among blacks themselves. The zealous efforts of black women’s religious organizations to transform certain behavioral patterns of their people disavowed and opposed the culture of the “folk” —the expressive culture of many poor, uneducated, and “unassimilated” black men and women dispersed throughout the rural South or newly huddled in urban centers. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 96

Categorization

• XREF: The class dimension of respectability politics resonates with Evelyn Higginbotham’s broader argument and with the Bourdieu-informed question of cultural capital deployed for racial uplift. — connects to: The politics of respectability required blacks to police their own behavior against racist stereotype — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 900; Educated black leaders policed a cultural divide against folk religious practice — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 226; Black middle-class respectability politics rejected lower-class cultural expressions as immoral. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1176 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Black middle-class respectability politics rejected lower-class cultural expressions as immoral. #expands (0.92) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1176
• Black lower-class culture functioned as political resistance through moral rejection of bourgeois colonial norms. #corroborates (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1177
• Black lower-class customs amounted to a political rejection of English bourgeois morality #corroborates (0.88)
• The politics of respectability required blacks to police their own behavior against racist stereotype #expands (0.85) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 900
• Educated black leaders policed a cultural divide against folk religious practice #exemplifies (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 226
• Respectability politics created status hierarchies inside the black working class #expands (0.80) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 930
• Black radical political traditions were narrowed out of view by liberal respectability #expands (0.78) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 408
• Respectability politics extends beyond Black women to nationalism and bodily self-control #qualifies (0.75) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1548
• Respectability politics blamed black victims for their own oppression #qualifies (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 923
• Respectability discourse blames victimized blacks, especially women, for their own discrimination #qualifies (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 923