The Oklahoman

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Clothes encounters of a thug kind

2001-04-22

The subject was gangsta chic -- that distinctive style of urban fashion that says, I am here to rob and injure you. I was speaking at a forum in West Virginia a few days ago when it came up.

I said what I usually say: It's troubling to me that young men, particularly many young African-American men, would dress in a style that's universally perceived as the uniform of the career criminal.

Whereupon a black woman rose from the audience, eyes flashing danger signs, mouth full of rebuke. Her own sons, she said, dress like this and she thinks they look darn good. Why should they change? So white folks will like them? White folks are going to think what they want about young black men, regardless. Besides, you can't judge a book by its cover.

I'm here to tell you the same thing I told her: Sometimes, you can.

Indeed, as she spoke, I was reminded of something that happened to me maybe four years ago. I'm standing on a subway platform waiting for the train. A group of teen-age boys is standing nearby and I'm watching them with a wary eye. You know the type. Loud and profane city kids dressed like street thugs. Hats to the back, shirts hanging open, pants sagging low so you can see their drawers. When the train pulls in, I wait to see which car they board. Then I board another.

You will have a hard time convincing me I did not do the right thing. Don't take that as an argument in favor of stereotyping. It's illogical to make sweeping judgments about a person based on some accident of birth or circumstance. None of us can choose the color of our skin, the nation of our origin, the orientation of our sexuality, the ability or disability of our limbs, the religion of our forebears. How stupid, then, is the person who attempts to draw conclusions about us by observing these things over which we had no control.

No, the argument I'm here to make has to do with the things we do control. One of which is dress.

I'm sorry, but if I see a woman tricked out as the rapper Lil' Kim was at the MTV video awards -- breast exposed, nipple covered by a pasty -- I feel justified in assuming she's not on her way to morning Mass. Similarly, the man with the Confederate flag T-shirt is probably not en route to an NAACP meeting. The point being that all of us make judgments all the time based upon how people present themselves. This is only natural.

Certainly, we make special dispensation for the fact that young people always dress so as to annoy the old folks. This, too, is natural. From the flappers of the '20s to the poodle skirts of the '50s, from the tie-dyed hippies of the '60s to the polyester fashion victims of the disco years, kids have always outfitted themselves according to ever- shifting ideas of what constitutes cool.

But gangsta chic is about more than cool. The universal perception and frequent reality is that it's also about sending an implicit threat. It's no accident that the style rose just as rap went West, finding its inspiration -- and performers -- among black street gangs in south central Los Angeles. Indeed, observers say the whole sagging-pants style came out of jails where prisoners are denied belts as a matter of security.

What does it tell us about their mind-set, their perception of self, that young African-American men from hellish neighborhoods would adopt that style as a badge of honor? And how grotesque is it that kids from the middle class adopt the same style as a statement of fashion?

I often hear such kids insist that dress is neutral and how dare you stereotype them based on what they wear. Fine. But it's an abrogation of responsibility for adults to encourage them in that delusion. Better to explain to them that what you show to the world, how you allow yourself to be perceived, will have profound implications for the way people treat you. This is a fact of life that has little to do with stereotyping, racial or otherwise.

I mean, I perceived a threat by those boys on the subway platform and acted accordingly. Anyone who thinks that constitutes racial stereotyping needs to understand something.

They were white.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2001

Answers

I think that 'look' is rediculous. I can understand mothers buying a couple sizes bigger cuz the kids will grow into them, but this 'look' that is being discussed goes way beyond that.

Hopefully the fashion will change soon, and for the better. It is the twenty-first century.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2001

No, no, it's great--the cops love it! Those gangsta wannabes who commit petty crimes start to run, their pants start to fall and they either get tripped up or they can't run fast because they're busy holding up their pants! Not infrequently, they lose their pants and you hear the cops giving out a description of someone in a red sweatshirt and white boxer shorts! Similar result with the no shoe strings.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2001