# What is the connection between wearing black and identifying with the poor and the downtrodden?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [April 14, 2018, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414 "2018-04-14T15:28:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2018, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/21 "2018-04-16T03:25:59Z")
My wife bought Johnny Cash’s black Tag Heuer watch from Southeby’s.
Very little downtrodden or poor about that transaction.
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### Author:  [@Grumbacher\_Red](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumbacher_Red)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2018, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/22 "2018-04-16T03:30:58Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> So Johnny Cash’s outfits made a sharp contrast with their simplicity. Even if he did not intend it at first, he later intended that to be sign a rejecting ostentatious displays of wealth and corresponding indifference to social injustice.
Right! Nudie suits weren’t his style, he wanted something much more understated.
And black clothing can have a wide range of meanings to many different people.
What about nuns? What about Goth chicks? Both wear black for probably very different reasons.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2018, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/23 "2018-04-16T08:23:03Z")
j666 writes:
\> Cash grew up during the Depression, in rural Arkansas. I imagine his family felt little connection to politicians or owners of the means of
\> production. I don’t mean to say anarchy is the same as communism, only that he probably heard economic and politic systems other
\> than capitalism and representative democracy discussed as a child.
Johnny Cash was born in 1932. When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, he was nine years old. So he certainly didn’t spend his teenage years listening to orators talking about how terrible capitalist society was. According to the Wikipedia entries, he grew up at the Dyess Colony, a New Deal program that gave a group of farmers each their own patches of land. Far from being an anarchist group then, it was a group that owed its existence to a government program. On reaching 18, Cash joined the Air Force, a government program. His early musical influences were gospel music and Irish music:
> **[Johnny Cash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash)**
>
> John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Most of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his career. He was known for his deep, calm bass-baritone voice,\[a\] the distinctive sound of his Tennessee Three backing band characterized by train-like chugging guitar rhythms, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor,\[4 Born to po...
> **[Dyess, Arkansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyess,_Arkansas)**
>
> Dyess is a town in Mississippi County, Arkansas, United States. The town was founded as Dyess Colony in 1934 as part of the Roosevelt administration's agricultural relief and rehabilitation program and was the largest agrarian community established by the federal government during the Great Depression. It was the boyhood home of country singer Johnny Cash. As of the 2020 census, the population of Dyess was 339, down from 410 in 2010.
> Dyess Colony was established in Mississippi County in 1934 as ...
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### Author:  [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2018, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/24 "2018-04-16T13:46:34Z")
What occurred to me is that a basic black suit or black jacket with slacks were the good or “church” clothes of the rural poor and that by wearing those to perform rather than the extravagant regalia of other country musicians, Cash was trying to communicate he was just like his fans (i.e., see guys in my best I’m not any different from you).
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### Author:  [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/25 "2018-04-16T23:51:23Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> j666 writes:
>
> \> Cash grew up during the Depression, in rural Arkansas. I imagine his family felt little connection to politicians or owners of the means of
> \> production. I don’t mean to say anarchy is the same as communism, only that he probably heard economic and politic systems other
> \> than capitalism and representative democracy discussed as a child.
>
> Johnny Cash was born in 1932. When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, he was nine years old. So he certainly didn’t spend his teenage years listening to orators talking about how terrible capitalist society was. According to the Wikipedia entries, he grew up at the Dyess Colony, a New Deal program that gave a group of farmers each their own patches of land. Far from being an anarchist group then, it was a group that owed its existence to a government program. On reaching 18, Cash joined the Air Force, a government program. His early musical influences were gospel music and Irish music:
>
> [Johnny Cash - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash)
>
> [Dyess, Arkansas - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyess,_Arkansas)
There’s no reason there is assume he would not know what anarchy is.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/26 "2018-04-17T00:54:36Z")
There’s a difference between knowing what anarchy and anarchists are and basing your fashions on anarchists’ clothing.
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### Author:  [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/27 "2018-04-17T11:51:56Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> There’s a difference between knowing what anarchy and anarchists are and basing your fashions on anarchists’ clothing.
Who said he did?
Someone asserted that wearing black for the underclass was a Johnny Cash specific thing (post 9). Someone else came in and said other groups associate black with disrupting society (presumably for the benefit of the disenfranchised) as well (post 11).
No one said Johnny Cash did because of anarchists.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/28 "2018-04-17T12:20:12Z")
j666 appeared to claim that I didn’t know that Cash knew what anarchy and anarchists are.
There’s no reason to think that Cash wore black because of what anarchists wear.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/29 "2018-04-17T12:24:49Z")
> [@Colibri](#):
>
> The anarchist black flag represents the absence of a flag, a rejection of government in general. It has more to do with anti-authoritarianism than support for the poor.
I was thinking mostly of the various [Black Bloc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc) gatherings you see in protests around the world. They’re generally left-wing anti-capitalist anarchists, and as such support the common working man, at least in theory
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### Author:  [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/30 "2018-04-17T13:27:40Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> j666 appeared to claim that I didn’t know that Cash knew what anarchy and anarchists are.
>
> There’s no reason to think that Cash wore black because of what anarchists wear.
It was the sequence of quotes (below) that I was referring to. No big deal though- and while there is no evidence about whether Cash did or did not know about Anarchists, it’s not really relevant to the point about other groups using black.
> [@naita](#):
>
> The “connection between wearing black and identifying with the poor and the downtrodden” is Johnny Cash. It’s not a connection that appears to have much traction in the rest of the world.
> [@Alessan](#):
>
> That’s not true - black has been the preferred color of various anarchist movements for over a century, from their flags to their clothing. Now, you may argue as to how much anarchists actually care about the poor and downtrodden, but the connection is a longstanding one.
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Did Johnny Cash really do some research and find that anarchists liked to wear black? Is there really any evidence that he remotely considered himself an anarchist? Isn’t it more likely that he knew nothing about anarchists?
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### Author:  [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/31 "2018-04-17T16:41:29Z")
An ironic bit of trivia is that black used to be ostentatious color because it was very expensive to make black dyes that actually looked black and not grayish.
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### Author:  [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-connection-between-wearing-black-and-identifying-with-the-poor-and-the-downtrodden/812414/32 "2018-04-17T23:43:09Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> j666 appeared to claim that I didn’t know that Cash knew what anarchy and anarchists are.
>
> There’s no reason to think that Cash wore black because of what anarchists wear.
No. No, that’s not really not accurate. Please refer to your post below.
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Did Johnny Cash really do some research and find that anarchists liked to wear black? Is there really any evidence that he remotely considered himself an anarchist? **Isn’t it more likely that he knew nothing about anarchists?** _[emphasis added]_
I pointed out in response to two of your posts that there is no reason to think Cash was not familiar with anarchy, and I stand by that.
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