Anecdote: (white) me and my (black) husband regularly dress like slobs. But when we clean ourselves up to go to a wedding or something, he looks amazing and I merely look dressed up.
This is based not only on my opinion, but also on the kinds of reactions we get from friends and family (usually shock to see us so spiffy, then a “My, cowgirl, you look very nice” and then, to my husband, a “DAYYY-um!”)
This makes me very nervous about meeting his family. I will have to buy a whole new wardrobe. And an iron.
Note: he is not a “southern churchgoing black” by any stretch, he is African-born (his parents are church-going, there) and he tells me that our way of dressing (ie like slobs) will not do when we go back to visit them. So maybe the phenomenon pre-dates the slave trade and has roots in Africa itself.
Oddly, he gets called Jamaican sometimes when he is shabbily dressed.