pull up your pants

Definitions

1. A reference to respectability politics, especially with regard to African-Americans.
   US, attributive, informal
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pull up, pants.

Examples

“Over at NewsOne, Donovan X. Ramsey contrasted two approaches President Obama has taken with black audiences: 1) the finger-wagging, pull-up-your-pants approach⟳ that he often takes with African-Americans, like⟳ the graduates at all-male Morehouse College [...]”

“A particularly jarring instance is the pairing of a blasé industrial film titled The Land⟳ We Love⟳ (1966) with footage of the Watts riots in 1965, and seeing, in addition to the absence of black faces in the former, how the American Dream⟳ is a wonderful dream⟳ but is also used as a nightstick to beat⟳ those who have⟳ been systemically prevented from enjoying it. (See⟳ also: the ‘pull⟳ up your pants’/All Lives Matter⟳ crowd.)”

CEFR level