The OP just described the mannerisms of a number of my black friends in college that have never been arrested, and are now in respectable middle-class jobs.
An outfit is just an outfit. Not every high school kid you meet with all-black clothes and weird hair actually worships Satan or contemplates suicide…
This.
Quoth Cisco:
And did you notice that every style that you mentioned is a type of melodic singing? Why should that seem any less funny than the plethora of non-melodic styles?
Based on my own black friends and acquaintances (not to mention members of my extended family) I would agree with this. The supposed “observation” in the OP is due more to unfamiliarity with black culture (or rather cultures) than anything else.
In any case, I don’t think there is any objective and factual way to answer this question, so it’s better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Yep. Let me think of say, the first 20 Black people I recall from high school/college.
- Nerd
- Jock
- Student leader
- Greek (fraternity/sorority)
- Conscious (politically active)
- Church boy/church girl
- Punk
- Grad school bound (different from nerd)
- Video game junkie
- Computer geek
- Hip hopper (into rapping, dancing, arts)
- Pan-Africanist
- “Thug” - into gangsta rap, dresses the role, etc.
- Sell out (really immersed into White culture)
- Bourgie (someone obsessed with material wealth, think like Whitley Gilbert in A Different World)
- Black Muslim
- Pothead/stoner
I think these are pretty robust categories (maybe the grad school one is a little broad). Of course they overlap.
If you live in South Florida, the huge amount of Caribbean islanders bring several new subcultures into play, like…
The way too hip, poser Rasta guy
The REAL Rasta guy
The Island Mama
The crazy-eyed, almost threatening Caribbean Jesus lover
The rude boys
just for starters.
You need to get out more.
The OP is kinda like asking, “Why do all black people look the same?” It’s all about perception and familiarity.
You see two guys dressed in similar “urban” styles and think they belong to the same subculture. But that’s like seeing a skinny white guy dressed in khaki cutoffs and flip-flops and another skinny white guy dressed in blue jean cutoffs and Tevas and assuming they belong together. When really, the former is an Mormon engineering geek who plays tuba in the college marching band and the latter is an atheist liberal who writes purple prose and has a boyfriend. Because you “know” white people, you might be able to pick up on subtle behavioral/dress cues that distinguish the two. But because you don’t know black people, you can’t see the differences.
That is kind of the point.
I know there’s PLENTY of other styles, but I’m not going to take the time to list EVERY Subculture of black culture that I know of. There’s plenty of variety and differences in something as generic as “Rap” so it’s easy to see that this could apply to others as well.
But I’m also making the distinction that “Rap” in itself portrays a sense of culture. There are Rap styles that have their own CULTURE, dialects, and mannerisms and behaviors- so i’m not really referring to the music here, but the differences culturally between a person who identifies with the Bay Area Rap scene and someone who claims they come from NY’s Shaolin* background vs. again someone who comes from the Dirty South.
Sure, to the general layperson, you could say “oh, they’re all just Rap.” Or as the OP stated, “Oh, they’re all just thugs”. But there is a huge difference within each group from each other, and to simply state it’s all Rap, or it’s all “Thugs” is to be ignorant of the actual variety and differences within cultures.
So yeah, I know there’s R&B and there’s plenty of others, but I’m just picking one thread, because that which i did for “rap” you can do for EACH of the others as well- I was just being more specific than you were. That’s all.
Thanks for the help though, **SquiDio **and the others. 
*Okay, maybe the Shaolin long island subculture doesn’t really exist. But I still love hearing it. Wu!
I hope OP, that this is a quest for knowledge.
I’m trying not to get really angy at your (I’ll say instead of something negative) uninformed position.
Are guys in suits the good guys? Are they better than guys in low hanging jeans?
Our IT guys have a dress code that looks nothing like the standard dress code in our building. I bet they make a lot more money and are better educated than some of the suits. I bet you’d consider them thugs at a glance.
I have my hair in locs. Am I from Jamaica? Do I smoke weed and do I worship Ja?Could I be a well paid receptionist fora architectural firm? Could I be an artist or student or entrepreneur? A minister?
I remember the Howard Beach trial. Every photo of the defendants showed them in suits on their way into court. How would you classify them? Preppy thugs who beat a stranded motorist to death or do you see college kids in trouble?
Please take off the shades.
Yes there are thugs out there, but there are many more young people quietly going about their lives in positive ways, who because of your perception, you’re unable to see. If a Rhodes Scholar wears a hoodie on his way to grab a cup of coffee (Hi VC03), in your eyes he’s a thug.
This is why some young Black men are routinely stopped by the police for doing nothing unlawful. Perception.
This is why “guilty of driving while Black” isn’t an urban legend - it’s a regular happening.
I have to stop this, I’m getting pissed off again.
Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors - I’m not going to read what I’ve written.
I don’t think my college had 20 black people. 
And what is “thuggish professional”?
Yo playa! If we readjust our paradigm to reallocate vendor costs by marketing channel, we can totally incur a significant long term cost savins’! That’s a lota benjamins biatch!!
I don’t think you understood what I was saying. But then, I don’t think I understood what Ro0sh was saying either, so we’ll call it even :).
Basically, yes. I’ve worked with 2 of these guys. You spend a lot of time wondering why they’re not just selling drugs.
Number 2 and 5 on your list are the ones that make my knees weak! Number one on your list wears their shirts too tight and their dreads are too ‘neat’.
Nothing to do with anything, I know, but I couldn’t resist saying that I loves me some Rasta men!
So… white students in “preppy” attire are not part of your aforementioned “preps” but are a distinct group called “students”, yet black students in “thug” attire are somehow not “students” but covered under your “thugs” group? How exactly does that work?
Pretty much, actually. Guys that don’t realize that Belly was a cautionary tale, that aspire to be the next hip hop business mogul a la Diddy, guys that think Fiddy and Game don’t look like clowns when dressed in a suit. Idea of “professional” is ostentatious and informed more by the Bernie Macs and pimps of the world, though they’re in a white collar environment where nobody will call them on the inappropriateness of it.
Do you realize that it sounds an awful lot like you’re implying that there are actually only two “African-American subcultures”, essentially consisting of “people who dress in a way I approve of” and “people who dress in a way I disapprove of”?
I do know a few Black colleagues (professors) that approach their craft like gangsters. They’re quite successful as well. One makes more from consulting, etc. than he does from his work in the academy.
Interesting, but if running a business by being crafty, high-energy, manipulative and willing to run roughshod over the competition or community is gangster, there are a LOT of rich white guys in business that fit the bill.
Is there anything wrong with modeling oneself after Diddy, Russell Simmons, or other “hip-hop” entrepreneurs? They are sucessful black men. And how do you know what their motivations are for what they do? It appears that you and some others in this thread believe that if a black person injects a few slang words into their speech and and wears brands like Phat Pharm and Roc-a-wear or Avirex jackets they are one stumble away from full time employment as a street pharmacist.:rolleyes: