Meanings
- USattributiveinformalA reference to respectability politics, especially with regard to African-Americans.
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 [...]
2014 August 4, Gene Demby, “'Are You, Like, African-AMERICAN Or AFRICAN-American?'”, in NPR, archived from the original on 13 Aug 20151 more example
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.)
2020 June 12, “I Am Not Your Negro review: race, rage and the American Dream”, in Sight and Sound, archived from the original on 24 Jun 2020
Origin
A reference to sagging among African-Americans, and its associated moral panic.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
pull up your pants. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pull%20up%20your%20pants
“pull up your pants.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pull%20up%20your%20pants. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pull up your pants,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pull%20up%20your%20pants.
Source: pull up your pants on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.