Despite criticism in the black community, whites held significant positions in Motown based on merit. Motown's black musical talents were taught to dress and conduct themselves with dignity and good manners. This approach was essential to Motown's artistic and commercial success based on the strategy of founder Berry Gordy to appeal across racial lines.
This was not always an easy sell to Motown's artists. For example, with Detroit black working class backgrounds, The Supremes resisted Motown's charm school and being made to sing, act, and dress "white." Although capable singers as individuals, The Supremes required considerable time and effort to develop as an act and to get the hits that made them a popular sensation.
No small part of the success of The Supremes was that, in accord with Motown's rules, they were required to be always well-dressed, well-mannered, and well-behaved. Their songs were also lyrically clear and comprehensible, being about love, loss, and romantic yearnings, the great themes of popular music. The Motown singing style was not identifiable as black or white. Motown was in the middle ground of American popular culture, more Beach Boys than rebellious rock and roll.
In contrast, The Beatles, The Stones, and The Who, -- Brits, of course -- and American rock acts were long-haired, often scruffy and surly, and given to frequent alcohol and drug references in their music. Motown singers though who took up drugs or consumed alcohol to excess or became obnoxious or self-destructive were subject to suspension or removal.
Bad conduct by rockers though often enhanced their appeal even as it could destroy them as individuals. The wild streak in Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, Kurt Cobain and others that made them into dead rock gods was and is a core part of rock and roll.
Correctly understood, Motown expressed the desire of black artists and music business executives and the black community in general to succeed by assimilating into America's cultural and economic mainstream. Rock and roll instead broadly appealed to generational rebellion by white teens against their parents. Call me deluded, but I see both as legitimate and entertaining but with Motown as the more conservative side of that cultural equation.
I wasn’t complaining about Motown, I was complaining about race cult boomers. You know, the stinking counter-culture 60s hippies who love themselves so much because they feel virtuous because they hate the man! (whitey). Boomers, a generation so stupid and vacuous that they elevated a music festival into a religious miracle as they wallowed in the mud.