Flying While Sagging

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Psst! Morehouse men — pull your pants up!

Psst! Morehouse men — pull your pants up!
by Stephane Dunn

I must admit, I had lofty expectations of Morehouse College when I began teaching here two years ago. After all, this was the house that such social and intellectual giants as Benjamin Davis and James Brawley built and that superstar students like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. solidified. The college’s mystique — as the only historically black male college — made me darn near skip into my interview and later into those first few classes.

I had visions of suits, bow ties, yes ma’ams and staggering displays of intellectual brilliance dancing in my head. Before too long, however, reality tempered the mystique, and I was forced to see that a legacy of social and cultural distinction and intellectual achievement is merely a sleeping history unless it continues to thrive in a contemporary version.

The newly implemented “no sagging” dress code with respect to men’s pants is an attempt to do just that.

The code raises obvious questions about individual freedom. Its inclusion of a very traditional script for male style — like no pumps and purses for men — will inevitably elevate the debate and criticism both inside and outside Morehouse. As I’ve walked to and from classes, I’ve often laughed aloud over how much my students resemble the public high school kids that I’d decided might be too much to deal with every day. Rather than being both disciplinarian and etiquette teacher, I thought I’d be a professor primarily engaged in my students’ academic and professional potential.

Instead, there is rarely a day when I’m not reluctantly forced to view the backside of students and worry for the millionth time that I will not make it up the stairway before the loose, bright red shorts shouting out from pants already bound for the floor completely fall off the oblivious student in front of me. It’s like being forced to peep when you absolutely don’t want to.

Usually, after mustering a reluctant, “Excuse me,” I implore the young man to “pull them up please” or jokingly say, “I’m sure you’re not trying to flash anybody.” In class, teaching is punctuated by commands to “pull those pants up, Mr. So-and-So — can’t you feel those pants falling lower and lower?” and trying to wheedle some sleeping or shy student out from his hiding place under a cap. Even if the written rules of the class include no hats in class, I’m inevitably forced to admonish, “Hat, please.”

During these moments of playing dress etiquette police, I’m uneasy and resentful. I’m forced to be their “mama” instead of an accepted and serious sister-professor.

Read the Full Essay @ the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Stephane Dunn, an assistant professor in the English Department at Morehouse College, is the author of “Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films.”

Issues Beyond the Morehouse College Dress Code

Morehouse’s Crossroads Has Nothing To Do With ‘Ghetto Gear’ or Cross-Dressing
by Frank Leon Roberts

The conversation regarding the new dress-code policy at Morehouse College has been hijacked by a vociferous gang of socially conservative black pundits: some of them simply politically misguided, others merely proud homophobes; a few of them the ideological love-children of Ward Connerly and Bill Cosby. In the short week and a half since I became the first writer to report the news of Morehouse’s new policy, the college has become the subject of an intensifying national debate regarding the role that style plays in producing (or constraining) black male substance.

By now, there is no need to explain what went “down” at Morehouse. You already know. But while you may have already heard the details of Morehouse’s new “no grills or purses” policy, it’s quite possible that you have yet to hear an impassioned defense of grillz and purses in the spirit of Morehouse’s most illustrious progenitors.

There are those who have argued that it is inappropriate to incite a national public dialogue about what’s happening at a private, independently funded college. In the blogosphere, there have been comments in recent days such as “What goes on at Morehouse is a private affair between its students, alumni and administrators. There is nothing illegal about a private school enforcing a dress code. Any student who is unhappy with the dress code has the liberty to leave.”

These voices are misguided and unsophisticated. Morehouse College is much more than simply a “private institution;” it is a black cultural pillar. In other words, the institution we call “Morehouse” is quite similar to the institution we call “the black church.” One does not have to be a member of these institutions in order to be affected by what goes on within their walls. Given Morehouse’s stature as a historical pillar, all African-American men (not just those who are students or alumni of the institution) have an ethical obligation to contribute to this national dialogue about the politics of the college’s policies—especially in instances where it promotes a climate of rampant anti-ghetto-culture classism and femiphobia.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root.com

Left of Black: Saggy Pants, Talking White and the Obama Bully Pulpit

Left of Black:

Saggy Pants, Talking White and the Obama Bully Pulpit

by Mark Anthony Neal



One of the more interesting aspects of the Obama presidency thus far, has been the focus placed on some of the more mundane aspects of Black life in America. Simple gestures by the President and the First Lady, such as a fist pound and the bearing of bare arms have become obsessions for journalists and pundits. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than with the reaction to President Obama’s oft-cited complaint about young black men and their saggy pants and Michele Obama’s recent reflection about childhood friends who accused her of “talking white.” What passes as simple curiosity about a very popular elected official, I suspect has more sinister aims, when considered within the context of popular pronouncements like “no more excuses” in the aftermath of President Obama’s election. Thus casual commentary from the President and the First Lady serve as a bully pulpit for those desiring to police the lives and culture of Black Americans.



The issue of “saggy pants” has functioned like a social panic in some municipalities, where local officials have sought to pass ordinances banning sagging pants, as the style is thought, by some, to be evidence of criminality among young black men. The town of Delcambre, LA did in fact pass such an ordinance, punishable by 6-months in jail and a $500.00 fine. The city of Opa-Locka, FL banned sagging pants in city parks and public buildings. Additionally the city of Dallas funded a series of public service announcements denouncing saggy pants, equating the practice with homosexuality. It was in this context that a MTV viewer asked then Senator Obama about saggy pants, when he sat down with MTV News days before the November election. During that interview, Obama made the now famous comment, “brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on.”



Within days of Obama’s pronouncement, numerous television news programs and newspapers ran stories about Obama denouncing saggy pants. Obama’s comments, taken out of context, could easily be read as an admonishment of young black men and by extension, the influence of hip-hop culture. In fact Obama, prefaced his comments by stating “I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time… any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there.” But as a politician, Obama also knew that his comments about saggy pants represented a “win-win” for him; he would gain traction with undecided voters who hoped that he would provide a moral center for a youth culture supposedly gone awry, while serving as a non-issue for the hip-hop community that he had so deftly recruited in support of his campaign. Quiet as it’s kept, the saggy pants style is largely passé with regards to hip-hop generation masculinity, as some of the most highly visible and highly compensated hip-hop figures such as Sean Combs, Sean Carter, Curtis Jackson and even the recently incarcerated Clifford Harris, Jr. are more often than not, seen in public wearing business attire.



Yet while Obama carefully crafted response was intended to offend no one who might have potentially voted for him, his comments have taken on a life of their own, utilized to organize anti-sagging/dress code efforts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and public high schools, like Plantation High School in South Florida which recently sponsored a “Pull Up Your Pants Day.” That this sudden inspiration often take places within the context of black communities, long grappling with how to relate to and control the young men in their communities, should not be surprising. President Obama’s stance on the issue has simply been used to shame black youth into “normalcy.” Underlying this push towards routine sartorial choices, is a troubling class dynamic, rooted in a century-old (if not longer) debate amongst Black Americans about the proper presentation of blackness in mainstream culture. Michelle Obama’s comments about “talking white” puts this dynamic in particular focus.



At a recent Women’s History Month event with Washington DC Public school students and prominent women like Dr. Mae C. Jemison, Alicia Keys, Alfre Woodard and Alicia Keys, Michelle Obama told a gathering of students that when she was growing up “I remember there were kids around my [Chicago] neighborhood who would say, 'Ooh, you talk funny. You talk like a white girl.' I heard that growing up my whole life. I was like, 'I don't even know what that means but I am still getting my A.” Like the President’s comments about saggy pants, Ms. Obama’s reflections were prominently featured in the next day’s news cycle. The notion of “talking white” and “acting white” have long been bandied about in black communities, but for a nation that has historically chosen to be oblivious to the inner dynamics of Black life in America, such a discussion elicits a fresh focus. It was just last year that perennial protest candidate Ralph Nader accused then Senator Obama of “talking white” as part of Obama’s effort to assuage white voter fears that he might be cut from the same cloth of traditional Civil Rights leaders. Nader’s comments would have been offensive, if not for the fact that there quite a few Black Americans who also read diction as an index of racial authenticity.



Ironically only days earlier, President Obama appeared on ESPN to announce his NCAA Basketball bracket and in response to Andy Katz’s query about whether the President stayed up to watch an overtime game during the Big East Tournament, Obama dropped this ditty: "I can't be staying up until 2 in the morning…I've got work to do." President Obama’s “can’t be staying…” uttered in what linguists refer to as standard black vernacular (BVE), was much like his “nah we straight” response at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington DC late last year. How can the man, who Nader accused of “acting white” be so adept at standard black vernacular? As Nia-Malika Henderson writes, Obama’s “language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with his black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences.” But President Obama is not unique; he is representative of at least three generations of Black Americans who have mastered the practice of switching codes—folk who move fluidly and fluently through multiple linguistic communities, with the understanding that so called mainstream American vernacular (talking white) was critical for putting Whites—at ill-ease because of their presence in the workplace or other places of business—at ease. Indeed, because we rarely see the “private” Michele Obama we have little knowledge of how adept her own control of BVE is, but her husband clearly has more pressure to navigate the tensions between making a nation of folk comfortable and being read as “authentic.”



There were many that read Ms. Obama’s “talking white” comments as rooted in Black middle class elitism, while others saw her comments as evidence of the bankruptcy of Black American culture, particularly in reference to the use what is often ignorantly referred to as “black slang.” The Obamas have little control over the ways their simple gestures will be utilized by others, whether it’s Black Middle Class gatekeepers trying to reign in the black poor or conservative ideologues who want to use the family’s success as ammunition to further erode the gains of the Civil Right era. Nevertheless this sudden focus on the intricacies of black like may finally help this nation get the story of race in this country, right.



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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of several books including the recent New Black Man. He is currently completing Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities for New York University Press.