The Case For Baggy Pants: Not Asking For It!

I have found myself having to do some things that I never really thought I would in the name of empathy.  Today I find myself defending baggy pants.  Moreover, I find myself attempting to point out the hypocrisy that we as a society engage in on a daily basis.

The point of this blog is an honest look at society and let's be honest, a lot of what we as a society
choose to deal with is PR related. Black men have the worst public relations team imaginable.
There are all kids of mythologies that surround where the style comes from.  What I have heard most often is that it comes from prison when inmates would use the style as a not so subtle symbol that they are "available" to other inmates...for homosexual sex.  Where ever it evolves from let's call it what it is, a fashion statement.

I don't particularly agree with it as a fashion statement and even as a child of the 80's and 90's I find I dislike it not so much for its symbolism, but for its impracticality.  It is just too hard to move around if you are constantly pulling your pants up.  I am a simple dresser though and I have trouble processing this the same way I have trouble processing high heels, not to mention the expense of each.

I think someone needs to make this comparison because it is very direct and poignant based on what is

happening in the world today.  So much has gone on with this fad.  Laws have been passed to ban it.  It has been used as an excuse to stop young men and pat them down because it is seen as "thuggish"

Let's take a moment to talk about what goes into the average stop by the police.  Three people, men usually, all armed surround you and one of them runs his hands over one arm, then the other, up and down your torso then buttocks and then finally up on and down each leg often lingering at the genitals. More often than not, there are flashing lights and it is done in plain sight of passing drivers and everyone else.  It is embarrassing and demeaning to have another man put his hands on your genitals in public without your consent.  Can we acknowledge this?

We are ok with this though. Why?

We say that we as a society do not want to see men's underwear hanging out.  Still, the thing that inspired me to write this story was the fact that I saw a young lady wearing the same pair of boxer briefs that I was only she was wearing them as shorts and I was wearing them under a pair of khaki Dockers where they could not be seen.  So if these "thugs" were just wearing the boxers (another thing that was a fad when I was in high school) they would be ok?

Still, black men do not have the PR team that other groups do.  There are no Thug Shaming walks or rallies where young black men hold up signs saying "Not Asking For It" .  The problem is where we are ok with placing the onus on the young men in this case.  It is a case where we say that not only is it ok that we stop you for something that you are wearing and generating probable cause based on what we are wearing, but the we are in fact "asking for it".  Can we start stopping young women and saying that they look like hookers for what they are wearing.

To add insult to injury is the fact that it is institutionalized.  That is to say that not only are you being felt up and vilified in public, but it is by public officials.    Meetings are being held, laws are being passed. We could find ourselves asking about when it will end.  It used to be zoot suits and in my day, it was overalls and floppy shoes with thick strings.  What will it be next?  If black men decide to collectively choose some other thing, will that too become something for which we can be stopped?  Or will it eliminate excuses and will we finally recognize why we are being treated as we are?

RACISM vs. racism...

I think that we need to get a few things straight.  Somewhere out there, there is a group who is planning a meeting in the woods.  They have hoods and robes and keychains and speak about 14 words for preserving the white race.  They have jamborees and burn crosses and they have a lot more nefarious things in mind.

There are also black people out there who hate whites.  They are not that organized and they don't have the backing, the history, or the gravitas of a 150 plus year old organization behind them but yes, there are blacks who hate white people.

The thing that we need to realize is that racism has levels of intensity.  Can we agree on that?  The thing that we are forgetting is that it is not a binary state.  I know plenty of people with whom I can sit in a room, laugh and joke.  Those same people would let me crash on their couch or share a meal with me, but would probably be a bit uneasy about letting me date their daughter.  It is a racism that is founded on a fear of difference; the other.

Those people I mentioned before, the ones who go to meetings?  They are RACISTS and their racism
isn't about keeping me from marrying their daughter.  Their racism is about killing me for having dark skin.  There are people all along the spectrum from not giving a rip about the color of someone's skin to plotting my elimination.  The thing that we need to realize is that people are entitled to their thoughts.   It is a freedom more sacred than freedom of speech; it is the right to think what you will. It is when they make those thoughts real in the world is when we begin to see problems.

We find ourselves all too often in the camp of making something a binary, either or situation and I think that is a mistake.  There is lower case racism and then there is RACISM.  On September 4 an officer in South Carolina opened fire on a man just reaching back into his car to get the license that the officer had requested.

I have no doubt in my mind that the man was stopped because he was black.  I have no doubt that he opened fire because the man was black.  The issue for me is whether or not his intent was malicious or not.  Was he being racist or RACIST.  As you can see from the video, the young man survived.  The officer was fired and then arrested and will likely spend some time in jail.

Why do I say that this is small racism, because looking at the way the officer treated him after the incident was somewhat compassionate.  Watching the video, I never feel as though there are real attempts to to cover his ass.  He immediately calms down and gets help for the man and if you listen carefully, you can even hear him call the man "brother".  This does not absolve him of his sins, but it does go a long way towards showing penitence.

So why is it important that we keep this in mind?  It is important because the desire for retaliation is the same when you look at the responses.  There were people who were out for blood when I read the comments.  There were people who were calling for marches and more and all I could think was "why?"  Justice was served and sadly a point is proven.

I think the thing that makes me so amazed and angry at the other incidents are the same things that make me so calm about this one.  It is the thing that the collective "we" have always wanted, and that is the situation that cannot be denied or dismissed by naysayers and the RACISTS.  See when a story like this is posted on social media, I tend to read the comments.  Few of them are very intelligent and even fewer still post cogent points. Still, they are the ones I fear.

They serve a useful purpose in that they define the parameters of the discussion.  Looking back at the Michael Brown discussion the RACISTS said a lot of things and said that Mr. Brown should have done certain things and said certain things and that those of us watching the case, who were not there, had certain responsibilities as well.

Let's look at what was said pretty much across the board by those who would be malicious and RACIST.
1.  "We need to make sure that all facts are in before we rush to judgement."
This was an interesting way of looking at things and the idea was to let things calm down a bit.  The only thing it really did was give people time to dig up dirt, smear a person, and create false information. During this time, while we found out very little about the officer, we found out so much about Michael Brown like that he had marijuana in his system and that he is accused of having robbed a store a few blocks away.  The officer who shot Michael Brown had no way of knowing that.  In the meantime the young man was painted as a thug who was hopped up on drugs who beat the officer and was going back to beat and kill him.
The video shows a young man who did none of this.

2.  "These people need to pull up their pants and get jobs."
The young man in the video was coming from work and his pants were up.

3.  "They need to respect the officers who stop them!"
The young man in the video never stopped calling the officer "sir" even after he was shot.

4. "You weren't there, you don't know what happened."
The officer's dashboard cam was on the whole time and caught every moment.  We see an officer stop an SUV after having passed him by and uses the excuse that the driver was not wearing his seatbelt.

5. "Stop playing the race card!  Stuff like this happens all the time to all races."
True.  It does happen to all races but with remarkable frequency to black males.  When it happens to people of other races, it is often for other reasons.

So the racists are calm and they have that moment to adjust, to think.  The RACISTS are still the ones saying that the young man did something wrong.  The RACISTS are the ones who have no excuses yet keep trying to justify why this young man was shot and why the officer is not such a bad guy.

So, the RACISTS back a little bit.  They say that we will never know what it is like to be an officer.  They minimize what happens and say that we would never do it ourselves. That may be true, but it is not what we are talking about.  They say that there are lots of great officers out there and positive engagements every day.  True, but that is not what we are talking about.

Was he stopped because he was black?  I am nearly positive.

Was he shot because he was black?  I have to say yes.  If this were a white man, reaching back into his car, it is likely nothing would have happened.  The officer may have gotten a little more aggressive with  a white man, but I doubt he would have been shot.

We are looking at making a huge statement with these cases.  We are saying that black men are something "other" and that just by virtue of the color of our skin, we are dangerous weapons and up to something.  I think we need to take a step back and wonder, am I a weapon?

Until we are all one color in about 500 years (hey, it could happen, right?) I can deal with racism.  Hate me all you want believe that I am out to rob you, clutch your purse closer, roll up your windows when I pass, I don't care.  We cannot institutionalize the ability to shoot me just because of the color of my skin.

The Black Man's First Mistake...

Let's get really uncomfortable here.  The title of this article and the title of this blog are not attempts, outright, to troll.  Yes I want people to read this, but I also want people to understand the point that I am trying to make.  For someone in my position, that is terribly difficult.  For someone like me, it is very awkward and it requires a great deal of effort to make a point.  There is a bit of what I would like to call the black man's irony in that no one really cares what you have to say until you die.

Maybe this is not a condition of all black men and maybe it is not the burden that the black man alone must bear, but I have found in my 40 years that while I am breathing, no one really gives a shit about what I have to say.  It is heaped with more layers of irony when we look at the fact that people are always talking about me.  Sometimes me specifically, but more often me in the abstract, solely as black male.

I take this tack because the main thing that I have learned while I have been here is that there might be even more irony built into the idea that I both as black man and as Eli Montgomery, am really very stupid.  Black men everywhere are really just very stupid.

I mean this in that their/our/my logic is based on a reality that they/we/I am not really a part of.  It could be called naivete or ignorance purely in the rhetorical sense.  We simply do not know any better. So, we tend to make mistakes and those mistakes tend to be fatal.  The results of that thought process do not tend to render themselves until after our body goes cold and the discussion begins.  No matter what we may have done leading up to it, our lack of understanding of the situation is what will lead to our demise.  There is a puzzle that we simply cannot figure out and a riddle to which we don't have all of the clues, I guess?

Let's talk about some of these cases, shall we?
Roy Middleton went out to his mother's car to get some cigarettes last year, but ended up getting shot  15 times by police who were called by his neighbor. Let's get this straight.  He goes outside of his own house and is shot 15 times in his own driveway just for going outside to get cigarettes.

John Crawford

John Crawford was shot earlier in August for carrying (and some say, pointing) a bb gun that he had picked up in the Walmart he was in.  Police arrived and shot him after they say that he did not obey commands to drop it.  Reportedly his last words were, "This isn't real".

Eric Garner died on July 17 when police confronted him about selling cigarettes illegally.  They attempted to place him under arrest and several officers jumped him.  He was taken to the ground with one officer having placed him in a choke hold (an illegal hold, even for officers) and reportedly his last words were "I can't breathe".

I can speak from personal experience about these things and no I have never been shot, but I have had a gun pulled on me both by criminals attempting to rob me and by police.  I can also say that it has been more times by police and (though I have done things in the past) it has been while I am doing nothing wrong.

I enjoy reading the comments when these articles appear.  It is often a bunch of people who say things along the lines of "why didn't he just get down" or something like that.  Some people allow their minds to wonder what they would do if, while they are reading an article on their computer or walking through the mall, the police busted in the door, guns drawn and began shouting orders.  In a calm situation while it is NOT happening to you, sure you can make all the right decisions.

Add pressure to the mix.  Combine that pressure with fear.  Mix those two with the surreality and incredulity that comes with not having done anything and you have a situation similar to what the average black man goes through on a daily basis.

Our mistakes come from the notion that we cannot shake, that we are human beings.  That is what makes us stupid.  We think we have the right to avail ourselves to the same system of justice that everyone else is allowed and that is not the case.  Eric Garner thought, as anyone would that if he cried out in agony that he could not breathe that the cops would do the logical thing and let him go.  If you watch the video of his last moments, he is basically pleading his case for why he is even being surrounded by police in the first place.  It doesn't make sense to him (nor to me when I watch the video, but then, I am a black man).  Similarly, though I have never even met the man, I can almost guarantee that John Crawford's last thoughts were that there was no way that the police were going to shoot him for holding a toy gun.

Roy Middleton thought that he could go out on his own property to his mother's car and have a late night cigarette.  Police would later say that they felt that he was lunging at them with a weapon.  Turns out that he only had his flashlight on his key ring which in retrospect makes the police's claims ludicrous.  Or does it?

Officers make the same claim about John Crawford, that he refused to drop the bb gun and they felt like they were in danger.  Officers are now making the same claims about Michael Brown, that apparently he was charging at an armed officer.  So all of these police are making all of these claims that all of these black men are challenging and attempting to attack them with no weapons of their own.

The latest Kajieme Powell, was wielding a knife and had just robbed a convenience store not too far from where Michael Brown was killed.  Yes, he did just rob the convenience store (of energy drinks and some donuts).  Yes, he did have a knife (the video would reveal that it was in his pocket and his hands were at his side when the officers arrived and he was killed within 15 seconds of their arrival.  His last words were "Shoot me!" They were all too happy to oblige.

The strand that runs through all of these cases is just a pure disbelief.  It is a strand of this is so silly that this cannot be happening to me that is running through these men's (and lately women's heads too) heads that give us a moment of pause.  We are stupid because we think that there is no way that we will be killed over a toy, or over cigarettes or anything of such.  It cannot be.

John Crawford's last words may be a bit too ominous on many levels.  How much of those words apply to what he was saying to the cops surrounding him and how much of those words were directed inward, at himself as they pulled the triggers.  "This isn't real."