Now you’re just making things up. I’ve said nothing of the sort.
I’m not saying everyone has their pants around the ankles and their butts out. There are variations on a theme and extremes. But, in reference to the young man in the OP’s video, there’s absolutely nothing ‘thuggish’ about his t-shirt, jeans or jauntily tilted hat. He’s a casually-dressed black teen.
And the perception of his appearance as criminal is a problem. He looks like my IT specialist brother-in-law (sans the hat) going to grocery store to buy scallions and curry powder. He looks like my school teacher cousin taking his car to the mechanic. The fact that our ‘casual’ is so many people’s ‘criminal’ isn’t just some excusable shorthand.
The way Eminem dressed, acted, and spoke in 8 Mile is pretty much how Detroit teens dress, act, and speak. So when you say that people who dress, act, and speak like Eminem in 8 Mile, you’re saying that people who dress, act, and speak like Detroit teens (or city teens in general, who have a lot in common in dress, demeanor, and language).
You’re saying “our” as if only black kids dress this way. There are plenty of kids of other races who do it as well. I’ve never thought of it as a black thing, but as a teen thing. I remember when my daughter was in her midteens and she tried that crap, and she is a super slim, tall model like girl. Luckily I held the purse strings re: the clothing budget and nipped that crap in the bud. As I did the whole “Seattle grunge” look which had just started getting popular when she was 13/14.
People seem to be missing that for most of us it’s not the person inside the clothing, as others have said upthread, it’s the clothing itself. I can’t speak for** Debaser** for frankly, if I saw two people dressed the same way, their clothing (whatever it was) would be what made a statement to me. REGARDLESS of their race. A white kid in saggy crappy clothing and a black kid in saggy crappy clothing would have the same effect on me.
And people also seem to be forgetting that we’re all talking about seeing someone we don’t know and what first impressions say to most people. JUST like all of those people in the “wearing PJs to the grocery store” threads. There are always several posters who are convinced that people who do this are unemployed nobodies who subsist on cheetohs and live in their mom’s basement. It all goes back to “clothes make the man,” “first impressions” and all that. No one is saying that, upon talking to a person that they’d obviously realize that this is merely a person who has bad taste in clothing but is otherwise a nice person, or vice versa, a person who dresses to the nines but is a jerk.
Sorry, I missed this part. The whole point of this was that WWYD segment was supposed to have taken two similar people, EXCEPT for their race, and shown how the onlookers would behave based solely on their RACE. But the producers didn’t do that. The script was different, the clothing was different, the attitude was different. It was slanted.
The two teens, whatever you (collective you) want to describe their clothing as, whether it be thuggy, or merely saggy were not “dressed alike”. The black kid had on the sloppiest crappy sweats and a dress for a shirt, and the white kid had on clothing that fit. The sideways hat was HARDLY putting it on a “dressed alike” platform. And as is obvious from this thread, people do view the way a person is dressed in a certain way, whether it be PJs out in public or saggy crappy sweatpants. This thread is proof of that. It has gone away from race to dress and behaviour, and both here, and in the original WWYD episide, it diluted the results that the experiment might have shown, had they done it cleanly.
I’d call that racist.
Right. I agree that it taints the results. But it raises the question of why that mode of dress is being read as ‘thuggish’ as opposed to ‘silly’. It has more to do with who’s in those clothes than just the clothes itself. Similarly dressed white kids don’t carry ‘scary black guy’ baggage.
I can assure you, wearing clothes that fit wouldn’t have changed the results very much. We’ve just learned, after all, that all it takes is a sweatshirt to be perceived as a potential threat. In fact, based on experience, all it takes is a baseball cap, a smedium Captain America shirt and thick glasses.
The problem is that the mode of dress is associated in your mind with something bad for a reason. You’re ascribing a neutrality to the way the white kid is dressed and a badness to the way the black kid is dressed. How did you get that preference in the first place?
Might the preference have arisen because it was the white kids (people like you) dressing one way and it was the black kids dressing the other way?
Dress is a very convenient thing to point to because it seems to have so much choice involved. “You’re choosing to dress like a thug. I judge you for choosing to dress like a thug.” But we see exactly the same thing when it comes to “black” names or “black” accents or “black” foods. Essentially, for most people it’s “I wouldn’t judge you if you dressed, sounded, ate, or were named like me. Because you don’t do these things like me, I judge you. But they are neutral and objective so I can’t be a racist or a bigot. Because I would judge anyone who dressed/talked/named/ate that way.”
To the folks who think the bias has more to do with clothes than race.
If the black guy had been dressed exactly like the white guy, are you arguing the reactions would have been exactly the same?
I watched the video even though the results are so predictable I can’t even understand how there could be debate. If I were to critique it, though, I would say the white guy seemed to be moving at a more leisurely pace than the other guy. The black actor seemed to make more furtive movements, and he seemed to be paying more attention to onlookers. His behavior seems to be more consistent with theft and his responses to some of the questions smacked of defensiveness.
These were snap judgements, though. Probably should look at it again.
So I just watched it again. No differences between them in furtiveness, so I was wrong on that score.
The kid was seen “mouthing” off more, but it was only because he was being interrogated in a way the white kid was not. Look for any indications that the black kid was ever given the benefit of the doubt and you’ll find none.
So yeah, predictable.
Everyone makes snap judgments. Every single one of us does it.
The difference isn’t in whether we are making snap judgments. The difference usually isn’t even in what our judgments are saying. The difference is whether we can take those judgments apart and identify, at least in part and at least some of the time, how we are biased and molded and prejudicial.
I judge people differently all the time based on what they look like. I don’t hide from that, and I don’t think such judgments are neutral or made in a vacuum. When someone talks about the prevalence of racism, I can say “Hey, I noticed I thought X and Y about that person over there who was black and A and B about that person who was white. Wow, I am prone to this too!”
Instead of assuming that I am free of any sort of racial bias or judgment, I think and assess and judge myself. I note when I’m doing profiling (or try to. I’m sure I do it at times without noticing). I don’t hide behind other things or act like I have a good reason. I don’t assume that because I consider myself a reasonably good person that it means that I am free of any hint or tinge of racism. I don’t consider “that is a racist thought” to be the worst thing anyone can say to me or the worst thing that I can think about myself.
So, the difference between us is not that one of us is racist and the other isn’t*, or that one of us judges on innate characteristics and the other doesn’t, or that one of us makes snap judgments and the other wouldn’t. The difference is that I’m aware of how flawed my judgments are and how much a product of my culture I am.
*though we might also differ in the degree of our racial bias
I’m still floored by the idea that baggy saggy pants are somehow considered “thuggy” and have yet to hear any compelling reason why teens dressed that way are assumed to be thugs.
In fact teens of both races have been dressing that way for decades now.
Here’s an appropriate clip from the movie Clueless which takes place at an upscale Beverly Hills private school.
Bike thieves everywhere are taking note. A memo has been issued stating the new dress code: no sagging pants. They can slouch a little, but can’t fall below the drawers line. Business casual is preferred, however.
The number of bike thefts is expected to increase substantially with this new policy.
And here I was, comfortably presuming that “thuggery” was a career path that did not require a dress code. Live and learn.
I was actually thinking jodhpurs, riding boots, and a smart little vest would be a good uniform.
Because it originated in prison. Certain people find this association endearing and adopt it for themselves.
In the Biblical sense?
“…business casual preferred…” hahaa, montro!
ETA: Cracking up at Tee and his urban legends!
Stated with authority too.
I’ve already answered this same question/comment several times. If the white kid and black kid’s clothes had been the opposite, I would have had the same reaction to the clothing. I love the way you keep acting as if people are saying that they’re associating the clothing with the race of the kid. What they’re actually saying is that they reacted to the clothing of the kid, as opposed to the race of the kid. I would have had the same reaction had the white kid been dressed all saggy. Or if any of the characters been dressed in “typical” (to simplify the term for argument’s sake) bum fashion as much as I had a reaction to the thug fashion. How a person presents themselves** is **noticed and reacted to by other people. A person’s initial reaction may or may not be correct re: who the person really is, but how people present themselves to the world is noticed and reacted to by the vast majority of others in society. It speaks to the kind of respect you have for others. JUST like people opine in the PJ bottom threads, Good GOD you’re the cause of the downfall of civilization if you’re caught getting the mail in your PJs. And with saggy gear looking so much worse than PJs, big surprise that people react negatively to it…
Back in my day, it was long hair on guys. Oh MY how the parents and older generation cringed at that. But right or wrong, it portrayed a certain image to potential employers, parents of the girl you might want to date, and so on and so forth. The smart young men, who wanted decent jobs, to stay on the football team, and/or to date the head cheerleader (or whatever), either cut their hair, figured out a way to hide it, or wore longer hairstyles that weren’t so extreme. Today people who are a little overly decorated with tattoos and metal don’t generally find work in mainstream jobs. This is regardless of race.
Though WWYD often has really good segments, this one wasn’t really as unbiased as they’d like to portray it. And that’s the point people are trying to make. I’d be interested in seeing what would have happened had they switched up all three characters. That is, have a sweet-faced charming Will Smith type as the black thief, a snotty entitled hot girl as the hot thief, and a white guy dressed in thug gear, or bum gear, or what have you. Have each the characters be acted throughout each of the races/genders. That would have resulted in a lot less of a slanted outcome.