Beyond the Trope of Black Masculine Respectability:
Notes on Morehouse College's New Dress Code Policy
by Frank Leon Roberts
Like many graduate students, I suffer from a serious “cant-get-any-work-done-in-my-apartment” syndrome. Try as I may, each time I sit down to write an article or dissertation chapter, I find myself having to venture out of my apartment and into a more open, public setting (libraries or cafes work well for me).
So there was nothing unusual about my decision today to pack up my laptop and head over to Morehouse College’s Jazzmen Café to work on my dissertation amidst a comfortable climate of Pumpkin Lattes and innocently-arrogant Kappa Alpha Psi undergraduates. At 6’clk, after I had managed to spend three hours working, I decided to grab a bite to eat at Morehouse’s Cafeteria.
As I paid my $6 Non-Morehouse student fee to enter the cafeteria, I was told that in order to enter I would need to remove my red, fitted-baseball cap. “Uhm…ok” I thought to myself. It seemed a bit strange to me that baseball hats would be prohibited in a stinky, old cafeteria lounge, but hey, then again this was Morehouse College, an institution hell-bent on promoting images of black middle class respectability and propriety.
I didn’t think anything of the no-red-fitted-caps-in-the-cafeteria policy until I glanced over at a headline from the October 6th Issue of The Maroon Tiger (Morehouse’s 84 year old student newspaper). “Administration Announces New Attire Policy.”
Immediately, I dropped my spoon in the stale cafeteria macaroni.
Read the Full Essay @ BrooklynBoyBlues
Notes on Morehouse College's New Dress Code Policy
by Frank Leon Roberts
Like many graduate students, I suffer from a serious “cant-get-any-work-done-in-my-apartment” syndrome. Try as I may, each time I sit down to write an article or dissertation chapter, I find myself having to venture out of my apartment and into a more open, public setting (libraries or cafes work well for me).
So there was nothing unusual about my decision today to pack up my laptop and head over to Morehouse College’s Jazzmen Café to work on my dissertation amidst a comfortable climate of Pumpkin Lattes and innocently-arrogant Kappa Alpha Psi undergraduates. At 6’clk, after I had managed to spend three hours working, I decided to grab a bite to eat at Morehouse’s Cafeteria.
As I paid my $6 Non-Morehouse student fee to enter the cafeteria, I was told that in order to enter I would need to remove my red, fitted-baseball cap. “Uhm…ok” I thought to myself. It seemed a bit strange to me that baseball hats would be prohibited in a stinky, old cafeteria lounge, but hey, then again this was Morehouse College, an institution hell-bent on promoting images of black middle class respectability and propriety.
I didn’t think anything of the no-red-fitted-caps-in-the-cafeteria policy until I glanced over at a headline from the October 6th Issue of The Maroon Tiger (Morehouse’s 84 year old student newspaper). “Administration Announces New Attire Policy.”
Immediately, I dropped my spoon in the stale cafeteria macaroni.
Read the Full Essay @ BrooklynBoyBlues
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