Don Lemon Is Off Base And Will Ending Sagging Bring Justice?

Don Lemon I wanted to let you know my opinion. Sagging is not based on criminal culture much in the same way that women wearing pants is not based in lesbian culture. See when women started wearing pants at the turn of the century the were called bloomers and were associated with being homosexual. Fast forward to 2013 if a woman wears pants now do we think of her as homosexual? The reason we don't is because we have some understanding of the way women dress and the restrictions that men placed on them where wrong and we, as a society, have ended these biases. The same can be said for sagging pants they may have meant on thing at one time but they don't mean that today. The problem with the way you talk is that encourages biases against black men.. What ever the black man does is seen as criminal and a cause for concern this has nothing to do with sagging and everything to do with the black man being as less than human and this needs to end.

Only in black culture is wearing your clothes in any manner seen as or even associated with being criminal. A black man in a suit is a someone that can't be trusted with your stocks and a black man in a hoodie is often seen as if they are on the way to a crime scene. What does that say about the black males on college campus across the country are they all trying wearing hoodies because they are going to a crime scene? Are the black men on campus sagging their pants because they are thieves? Go into any sandwich shop and look at the boys in the back making minimum wage rather the listen to rock or rap their clothes are disheveled. Wearing your clothes in this way is a sign of rebellion.

The black male as is the case with most other adolescent males is that they are rebellious. But what institutional racism does is make anything that is associated with blackness evil. So because the black man wears his pants below the waist it needs to be policed. He is a thug. The white male has the privilege of wearing his clothes like a gothic for example and not be seen as criminal. But we as blacks are not a monolithic people and it is not just sagging pants black people are seen as less than human if they are wearing anything. It is like blackness in America is a funk that no layer of cotton can cover. Blackness is at the core of many laws in America and it will be until white privilege is acknowledged. There are fewer news institutions that target white youth wearing t shirts with obscenities on them than the hysteria that is created over sagging. Blackness is seen as something that has to be controlled an invalid cause for concern in my opinion.

During a program that was being held at The Ohio State University African American extension center which is located in the middle of historic Brozneville Columbus, Ohio a young man walked past an open door way. At the the time there were a few dozen of us singing and a young black man walked past the doorway and was wearing his pants ever so slightly below his waist. Now instead of inviting the man into the man into the room a few members of the group yelled at him for having sagging pants. I was embraced and this solidified my opinion that respectability politics don't work. Respectability politics says that if that black man pulled up his pants he would have equal justice under the law, the race can advance and racism will end. But only if it was as easy as pulling up one's pants.

But the problem is not the black man and their sagging pants it is the civic inequality. Because of civic inequality laws have been set up to allow the police to harass black males for wearing their pants low. So as long as this civic inequality exist whatever the black man does will be seen as the cause of the problem. In 50 years if we  are not sagging our pants it will be whatever our future slacks look like. I remember that i could not get into a club because my shirt said Phat Farm and not Abercrombie; it was not about the shirt. Simply put sagging pants are a red herring.

Don Lemon you are doing exactly what the white power structure wants you to do. They want you to point at these five things that black people need to fix and once we fix these things then we can talk about fixing racism but W.E.B. DuBois said it 100 years ago. "Relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro’s degradation" And I personally don't agree with your selection of quotes from President Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X asking for black respectability but like Martin Luther King Jr. said. "“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice."

The goal of any conversation of race should be a conversation about justice and none of Don Lemon's five points talk about justice. Don Lemon if it was as simple as pulling the pants up to end racism don't you think black people would already be doing it? The answer is so so so complicated because even if we do pull our pants up that will not stop civic inequality, I think the power structure will just find something else to make black people out as less than human.