YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT
Dear Race Manners:
I’m a graduate student in education and currently a teacher’s assistant at a somewhat diverse urban charter school in a major city where I hope to teach in the future. The principal (African American) is a very dedicated professional who is himself a mentor and father figure to many of the students, who look up to him.
This year he launched an after-school club for the black male students where he brings in speakers and doles out personal and life-skills advice, with a heavy focus on self-presentation. The boys who participate have agreed to wear bow ties to school every Friday, and I’m told he’s constantly driving home messages like, “Dress for the job you want now” and “No one will respect you until you respect yourself [and show it through your clothing].”
I myself am Hispanic/white, and I’m aware that I may be out of touch with the cultural forces and priorities here. But I have to ask: If this message is so important, why aren’t all of our students getting it? And isn’t there something just wrong about black male students being singled out for this focus on clothing versus academic development and normal teenage experiences? I have to admit, I feel bad for some very good students who have been pushed to place what seems like an undue focus on outward appearance. Advice on what to say or do? —Bothered by Bow Ties
Your school’s principal sounds like a wonderful person who wants the best for his kids and is giving black boys the extra support and attention that anyone would agree they could use, given their place in the current landscape of educational inequality.
But I agree with you. The focus on their outward appearance—potentially at the expense of what’s happening on the inside—rubs me wrong. Really wrong.
Here’s why: It strikes me as a reflection of a limited and sad worldview. One that leaves room for white male success to come in the form of scruffy facial hair and jeans or shorts worn around the ping-pong table at a start-up company’s headquarters, but includes a narrow mandate for their African-American counterparts: Look like you popped out of the Men’s Wearhouse circular or be a danger to society and a total failure. Choose either sagging pants and “the streets” or button-ups and conventional success. Decide between a hoodie and getting shot or a bow tie and a role as a “high-achiever.”
Self-expression? Freedom to experiment? Normal teenage rebellion? Creativity? Forget it. All of those are for other, more privileged people.
My belief is that good-hearted people buy into this thinking because it’s seductive to imagine that we can use clothing to control for individual racism against black men and boys, rather than addressing all of the complicated forces that lead to racial inequality.
Source: The Root | JENÉE DESMOND-HARRIS
