We Are Having The Same Conversations With Different Generations
There was a time when young men started wearing baggy pants and jeans without a belt. They were sagging. Legend has it that this fashion trend came from prison culture. People in jail cannot have belts for safety reasons. At first, the sagging was a fad for a few. Then it was everywhere. Older folks were outraged. Teachers were constantly telling to pull their pants up. One famous celebrity who has a degree in education publicly chastised young men about sagging pants.
Then Twitter happened in 2006. People started to voice their opinions about people who were condescending to the sagging pants generation. The year was 2009. Before the Black Lives Matter movement started, a respected older Black professor was entering his own home. The police were called because this distinguished man of letters whose nickname is Skip looked suspicious. That incident affirmed my belief that respectability politics will not save us. However, there is nuance to this. People do judge a book by its cover, Sometimes, dressing nice has been the difference from a situation getting escalated. Other times, people only see color. Like Janelle Monae said:
'Cause baby, whether you're high or low
Whether you're high or low
You gotta tip on the tightrope
Twenty years later after the advent of Twitter, people are having a similar conversation about bonnets and durags at Tuskegee University. I don’t know why people are so riled up again. The conversation has happened before. The photographer Gordon Parks took photos in the 1950s and Bisa Butler interpolated his work into her art today. We are going around in circles having the same conversation. The only thing that has changed is that different generations are talking. We have to get off this merry-go-round because I am getting dizzy.