One the law is in effect, put the local Edna Mode at the courthouse and stand a cop next to her, with a police iPhone and a Square. They can just ticket and CC swipe every single guy who walks up with the teensiest iota of stomach hanging over his belt or waistline.
Alternate theory: upside-down stripper
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Barney Stinson.
I was unaware that dressing nicely was a white thing. I must tell the African-American men Iâve seen wearing a dress shirt and slacks that theyâre race traitors. Donât worry, Deidzoeb, Iâll give all credit to you.
People of all races come up with ridiculous-looking new fashions, i.e. the âwhale tailâ trend popular among young white women a few years back.
However, when the only fashion trends to become criminalized just happen to be the ones that are popular among young men of color then itâs more than fair to speculate that race may be a factor.
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Last time I was there, albeit about six years ago, the number of âyoung men of colourâ was exceedingly slim. The baggy pants fad was far more popular with white guys who watch too many rap videos and think theyâre âcool.â
Perhaps I should clarify. I canât speak for others who made a racism connection/assumption, but I fully expected that one or more of the people behind the law would âshare skin colorâ with the likely/intended targets.
Itâs not uncommon for some of the louder complaints about saggy pants (and some of the most enthusiastic spreading of various urban legends explaining their existence) to come from people in the black community. I donât personally feel that they are magically exempted from a suspicion of acting from a place of racially-tinged fear. Yeah, itâs more complex than the fear exhibited from some corners of the white world, more of an internalized thing⌠Perhaps instead of a bald âracism,â something like âoutwardly imposed embarrassmentâ might be more accurate? I dunno, as a non-member I hesitate to make too many declarative statements. Some of these complaints could come from an âold vs. youngâ generational conflict, for all I know. All I do know is that I observe a lot of calls from older black people for young black people to âdress properly,â and âstop sagging,â etc.
Is this racism, in the sense that we would apply it to some nasty white supremacist blog? No, but itâs a dynamic that slots in somewhere near it, I think, if only accidentally. I suspect that â generational conflicts aside â some of this comes from a place of wanting to protect kids from the prejudices of others. But since it adopts the same frames, and ends up penalizing those kids for their cultural expressionâŚ
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Hereâs my only response to that post -
From the initial article:
Itâs just the kind of stupid (and unconstitutional) law that gives cops the excuse they need to harass young men of color. Oh, Florida.
Meanwhile, from someone who has actually lived there:
As of the 2010 census, Ocala was 63.3% non hispanic white, 20.4% african american, 11.7% hispanic or latino, 2.6% asian, 2% all other.
Look, long before I became a Certified FancyPants (really, someone who one might suspect of leading the DRESS PROPERLY parade), I was a white guy who listened to âtoo manyâ rap songs, and who thought he was cool.
When I was a teenager, I was the subject of a hysterical article in the local paper. Well, I deduced that I was, along with a couple of other area teens. Basically â early 90s, here â âgang clothesâ like Starter jackets, baggy (not yet saggy) pants , and British Knights sneakers had started showing up in our rural Midwestern town. Largely affixed to my body. According to the article, and the police/sheriffâs dept. sources involved, this meant that we were being rapidly overrun by actual drug gangs. The author and staff of the newspaper were white people. The cops were white people. The âdangerousâ kids were all white people, attending a 99.9% white school. But the hysteria was based on some racial bogeyman stuff. So even though everyone involved was the same race, there was a sort of racial fear/embarrassment thing at play. And yes, people did become years-long targets of interest based on this bullshit, ending up on secretive lists of troublemakers, subject to random stops and searches, and what have you. Ask me how I know.
I donât see how the racial breakdown stats you are citing show that the 20-odd % of black kids wonât be harassed for dressing as their peer culture recommends, or how they wonât be harassed more heavily than their more numerous white friends (who also sport that look). Because thatâs whatâs going to happen in real life. People are going to be harassed for either 1) looking too âblackâ while being not-black, or 2) looking too âblackâ while actually being black. Bottom line, people â mostly black ones â are going to be harassed.
If this really is â deep down â actually about underwear; well, Iâll eat my pants.
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EDIT: My extremely tasteful, exceedingly proper pants.
People need to stop being racist scum.
Assuming thereâs some objective standard of dressing correctly, or that your culture is the one thatâs âdressing nicely,â is just arrogant, limited, provincial. Itâs also short-sighted, because in a decade or a century, or maybe just years or months, thereâs bound to be some aspect of your current understanding of what counts as âdressing nicelyâ that will become old-fashioned or reviled, even by people of that same culture. Wide lapels, wide ties, narrow ties, top hats, whatever. Didnât I already list enough examples to make it clear?
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Sounds a little like when Bill Cosby criticizes young or poor African-Americans for not behaving properly, which somehow sounds like failing to assimilate white culture. Iâm not going to say Cosby or this councilwoman are racist, but at best theyâre short-sighted for endorsing one culture as proper and another as improper.
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The point is, all explanations are false, thatâs why I classed it as an urban legend.
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Yeah, this is kind what I was getting at. Maybe not âinternalized racism,â but some sort of âinternalized racism adjacentâ dynamic.
Some of this stuff is just par for the course, in a generational resentment sense. The older generation always seems to think that the younger ones have everything handed to them, and yet have managed to squander those advantages. I find myself falling into that mindset, myself, as I get older. On that level itâs not a racial thing, at all, just a seemingly never ending perception problem. But itâs only the dominant culture that gets to define âproperâ dress and behavior (âcoolâ dress/behavior is a different animal), which sort ends up looking like older white people are admonishing younger white people to dress/act like older white people, while older black people are admonishing younger black people to dress/act⌠Like older white people.
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How I know?
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First, Iâll bet you ten bucks that in practice this law will disproportionally impact the 30-something percent of Ocalaâs population that isnât white.
Second, even if the people who wrote this law were targeting the âwhite guys who watch too many rap videosâ then theyâd effectively be punishing people for emulating young men of color, which still strikes me as pretty racist.
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I call BS. That guy is wearing waders, which are intended to be worn that height irrespective of age. Definitely not illustrative of âhow high can an old man hike up his pants.â For that dubious honor, I submit this guy:
http://www.avalonchurch.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/old-man.jpg
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Itâs a subjective thing, but Iâm jsut sayinâ itâs wrong. 
So it doesnât matter, itâs all just racism to you.
I emulate men of colour too. Take a look at Sammy Davis Jr. Black and always dressed to the nines. Dressing like an slob isnât a racial thing.
