I love this; have you read about Atlanta's effort to ban saggy pants in public?
It's obviously a controversial measure, and I'm of mixed feelings about it, nothing of which has to do with denying a desire to see the stupid baggy pants syndrome removed from public sight.
But I do struggle with it. Consider that wearing the baggy sagging jeans started with young black males as a tribute to those in prison, so it is in a way a form of political protest. What can be more patriotic than dissent?
I'm reading an article with comments from Debbie Seagrave, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_fe_st/atlanta_sagging_pants
"Seagraves said any legislation that creates a dress code would not survive a court challenge. She said the law could not be enforced in a nondiscriminatory way because it targets something that came out of the black youth culture."
"This is a racial profiling bill that promotes and establishes a framework for an additional type of racial profiling," Seagraves said.
Multiculturalism at its best! If a behavior --any behavior, even something as low as walking around with your pants falling down-- represents a "cultural" expression by a group, especially a minority group, then it MUST be a good thing, and cannot be judged.
You’re supposed to believe --condescendingly so-- that the inarticulate thug and the freelance slut are young black people in their natural state and in need of legal protection.
And so, we observe how indecency (defined by white, middle-class values, of course) and low trash culture (a term used by the dominant oppressor class to create “the other”) is transformed into a victimology. Efforts at public decency are examples of white oppression. Which is ironic since Councilman C.T. Martin, who is pushing the legislation, is black, but unauthentically so. He was brainwashed by them white folk into profiling his own kind.
