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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Making A Lousy Fashion Statement

Leonard Pitts, Jr. Knight-Ridde

Touch your thumb to your forefinger.

That’s the approximate waist size of my 13-year-old son.

Now, put your index fingers together so that your arms form a circle in front of you.

That’s the size of the pants he tried to walk out of the house in the other day - with boxer shorts riding 2 inches above the belt line, no less.

Marlon was, let us say, reluctant to change his gear. His mother and I were obligated to explain - forcefully - that he would go out dressed like this only over our cooling corpses.

Ordinarily, I would support a child’s right to make a fashion statement. As the former owner of platform shoes which could be mounted only by stepladder, I lack the moral authority to advise anybody on issues of style and taste.

But I draw the line at pants five sizes too big. Because saggin’, as it’s called, has less to do with fashion than with dressing down to the desolation of inner-city streets.

Not that that has stopped the boys in the ‘hood - and for that matter, the boys in the ‘burbs - from going with the flow. “Gangsta chic” - the look and style of inner-city thuggery - has seduced not only the children who must live there but also a generation of “wannabe gangstas” who never have been any closer than their MTV screens.

“You look like a little gangsta!” I yelled at my son.

My anger surprised me.

“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” he replied, deftly using one of father’s aphorisms to entrap father.

And so, father was forced to sigh and concede that this dispute was an exception to his wisdom.

While it’s foolish to draw conclusions about a person based on race, gender, sexual orientation or some other accident of birth, I told him, clothes are another matter. Clothing reflects a conscious personal choice.

If you see a man in a clown suit, you reasonably can assume him to be a clown. If you see a woman in a business suit, it is not outlandish to think she might be a business person.

And if you see a young man in a thug suit, might a person not fairly take that man to be a thug?

Yet, so many boys are rushing to that identity. I think of the black child I once saw walking on a muggy day in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., under a hooded jacket, looking more like an extra from a Run-DMC video than a citizen of the subtropics. I’ve lost count of how many white suburban mall rats I’ve seen slouching through the food court in self-conscious imitation of people they never have met from a place they never have been.

A white boy who looks like a thug might - might - get the chance to correct that impression. But a black boy is unlikely to be afforded even that opportunity.

He is, as a comic once said, “born a suspect.” In his case, clothes don’t so much make the man as “mark” him, verifying for people who never have taken the time to know him that they were justified in their prejudgment.

No, it’s not fair, but it is fact.

That’s a hell of a thing to try to explain to a 13-year-old who wants only to be stylish, a child for whom racial politics is only a distant noise, faintly discerned.

Not that I worry for my boy, mind you. This is, as they say, a phase. He’ll make it to manhood OK.

But I have seen and know too many other black boys in whom I don’t have that confidence. Manhood is a less definite destination for them, a place they search for in violent words, in a cool stance and in the folds of clothes that sag like a flag on a windless day.

The words, the stance and the clothes are a way of asserting control, inciting fear, demanding respect and of saying what they haven’t the words for: I am somebody.

And a way of not hearing the whisper of doubt that replies, “No, you are not.”

Their hurting makes a lousy fashion statement.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Leonard Pitts, Jr. Knight-Ridder