Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) weak, effeminate.

1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 34: Ex-sheriff Oatmeal ridiculed the police, calling Chief Smalley a pinktea cop.
1913		Day Book (Chicago) 9 Jan. 9/2: A bunch of mollycoddles and pink tea dudes.
1913–14		Van Loan ‘Scrap Iron’ in Taking the Count 219: This [i.e. a fight] was no pink-tea dancing contest.
1915		S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job 193: The only way of stoppin’ Hunk was to choke him, which wa’n’t any pink tea proceedin’.
1939		‘Citadel Gloss.’ in AS XIV:1 Feb. 29/2: pink tea hound, n. Cadet who stresses social life.

2. pertaining to upper-class manners; the inference is neg.

1919		Scribner’s Mag. LXVI 655/2: Pink Tea Ambassadors [...] Of course most places at embassies and legations are pink tea slaves.
1920		N.Y. Tribune 29 July 8/7: The Farmer-Labor candidate [...] has retorted with a reference to the defeated faction as ‘coupon-clipping intellectuals’ and ‘pink tea uplifters’.
1957		F.H. Hartmann Relations of Nations 90: ‘Ambassadors [...] who belong to what I call the pink-tea type.’ l This is, as Americans will quickly recognize, a double-barreled indictment of diplomats.
1997		(con. 1915-30) M.A. Summers Construction of Black Middle-Class Manhood 133: ‘The Pink Tea Set’: The Garveyite Critique of Mainstream Black Leadership.

3. second-rate.

1936

W. Heyliger Big Leaguer 46: Buck would probably call this a pinktea park.