And so on. Look, I read and watched Obama’s speech the other day. I read the great piece by Chris Caldwell in Financial Times. If Tom Maguire thinks that when Obama was writing his speech and Caldwell was writing his piece, what they had in mind for a candid discussion about race was a bunch of jackasses stating “Here is what I hate about niggers,” then he probably really didn’t understand the speech or the FT piece.
Hilariously, that is EXACTLY what a certain subset of pissed off, self-pwning white dudes think when told there is going be an “honest” conversation about race somewheres. They think to themselves, “Finally, I will be able to vent my ill-informed rage against all black people, which I base upon that one time this dude in a stupid hat cut me off in traffic.” Promise them a chance to be honest, and they won’t say to themselves, “Hmm, perhaps I will come to admit that I am not king of the world because of my own mental shortcomings and lack of ambition, and because I am a whiny pussy unable to see all the ways in which I’m truly victimized through the haze of my Rush-induced intellectually fuzzwaddery.” They’ll say, “Finally someone will say what no one in the history of the world has ever said, which is PULL UP YOUR DAMN PANTS YOU KIDS and while you’re at it, off my lawn!”
A.
I don’t want to go too OT here but the Florida Senate just passed legislation banning low pants in school with punishments that quickly escalate to long suspensions (sponsored by a black Democrat) but the legislation is going nowhere because our white Republican Governor (Charlie Crist) is siding with the NAACP saying the state shouldn’t get involved with fashion and kids belong in school regardless of what style pants they choose.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/NEWS0104/80320089/1075
This is actually a good frivolous way to discuss a serious topic. Black people don’t have a monolithic view on the subject of low pants and white people including powerful white people like the Republican Governor of Florida can reasonably conclude that it’s better to have kids with low pants learning in school than suspend them for some arbitrary concern over fashion. Gov. Crist is a decent guy who all on his own gave Florida felons who had completed their probation their right to vote back — an amazing instance of a politician doing the right thing for the right reasons.
but the baggy pants is just making the black kids ready for prison pants.
If we could just force black teenagers to dress like old Jewish men in Florida with their pants pulled up around their armpits, it would solve all the problems in this country.
And while we’re at it, we can force them to wear onions in their belts, too.
So decades from now, will we be tracking the rise of the stock market by the fall of waistbands as opposed to the rise in hemlines?
Up here in Whitebreadville, Soviet Canuckistan, the vast majority of the young men you’re going to see wearing their pants around their hips arewhite. Seems like hip-hop is the music of choice for bored white suburban teenagers, too. I’m not sure exactly what that says about us as a group.
Here’s my as-a-class-based statement for the day: I wish I could be half as stylish as the local Iranian women are.