As most know by
now, NBA Commissioner David Stern has issued an executive order
that predominantly Black
players will dress in a "business casual" manner when
traveling. This new “dress code” dictates players can no longer
leave or arrive at games wearing headphones, sunglasses while indoors,
T-shirts, shorts, sleeveless shirts, chains, medallions or pendants.
They will be restricted from wearing replica or throwback jerseys
and baseball caps to post-game news conferences. Gone will be the
sporting for young adoring fans, of gym shoes and other garments
with one’s own name, or products manufactured by Black owned and
operated companies such as FUBU. Basketball players will dress
implicitly unlike basketball players. Across the country journalists, talk show hosts,
coaches, parents and others hail the decision as a sudden revelation
of decency
in sports that will also profoundly impact the quality of their
household child rearing. Somehow, if a basketball player leaves
his gold chains on the dresser, budding urban ball players like “Little
Felicia Walker,” will be provided true discipline and character
in their future goals. To call that ridiculous is an understatement. High
school principals and others describe the example set by NBA players
as strongly influencing impressionable students – an obvious truth. What
is alarming is the extent of value they place in such insignificant
matters as attire of ball players, most of whom are more centered,
thoughtful, and well-behaved than many U.S. Senators.
The suggestion that NBA player dress has a
direct impact on player conduct is absurd and unproven. We have seen no public attention
given to a relationship between (accused and convicted) White corporate
executive thieves and the need to restrict crisp white business
shirts, suits and ties. There is no public dialogue about how
attire might impact moral outcomes with Enron, Worldcom, Tyco,
Adelphia Communications and Dynegy executives. Based upon the
logic set forth – cloths being the determinant and conduct being
the variable – NBA players should dress up, and Corporate CEO’s
ought to dress down. Also, NBA players do commonly dress
in “business casual” attire and in suits and ties on a regular
basis such that the field is easily diverse. Black folk have always
been as sharp as we want to be.
On the other hand, I see this decision by Stern
as a wildly exciting breakthrough. I hope he places even more restrictive regulations
on NBA players. Any corporate patriarchal desire to dress adult
Black men against their stated wishes ought to be exposed at every
turn. But, also the dominance and control associated with the
need to see Black men uniformly dressed is something “politically
deficient” (a term lifted from Dr. Cornel West) that Black basketball
players need to witness and experience. They need to feel the
humiliation of a 63-year-old White man’s domination over what jewelry
and shoes they should wear. In my mind, it’s time Eurocentric
executives helped us educate some of our towering youthful millionaires
to a few realities. Players need to know how their modern experience
is so associated with our ancestral stomping-grounds. They need
to know that, according to Shane and Graham White, in Slave clothing and African-American culture in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Oxford Journals, 1995), “newly
arrived Africans were quickly clothed in European garb and made
to conform” to White “concepts of decency.” They need to
know about the problem slave masters had with “individual slaves” throughout
the American colonies who, “managed to incorporate items of clothing
into a ‘look’ that whites found strange and occasionally even unsettling.”
It is ironic our culture has been asked to
sway from one extreme to another in order to pay homage to European
dominance. Historically,
for many Whites, “the sight of well-dressed slaves” (italics
mine)… aroused suspicion that the wearer might be involved in some
sort of illicit activity.” Today, in the current national drama, casual wear
quickly arouses Euro-suspicions.
NBA players need to be aware that what is
controlled can be less important than submitting to control in
and of itself. They
need to know legislation was passed entitled, “the South Carolina
Negro Act of 1735” which “went so far as to prescribe the materials
suitable for slave clothing, allowing only the cheapest fabrics.” While
in this case, clothing expenses are not the issue, there is a glaring
tie between White need to control strong Africans who were enslaved
and the longing to control their African ball-playing descendants.
Found among thousands of public runaway posters
throughout the colonies was a “bewildering variety” in the attire enslaved Africans
wore, demonstrating, “a surprising degree of social and cultural
space.” In other words, in defiance of the degrading “Negro Act
of 1735,” the enslaved found ways through their dress to distinguish
themselves from the look of the cruel, brutal (and jealous) slave
master.
For you womanist/feminist thinkers – be ye not ignored. The author,
Shane White, tells us that in 1744, “less than a decade after the
passage of the ‘Negro Act,’ a Grand Jury complained that ‘…Negro
Women in particular do not restrain themselves in their Clothing
as the Law requires, but dress in Apparel quite gay and beyond
their Condition.’" In various spans in the history of enslavement,
African women manufactured their clothing with “contrasting colours
in a manner that jangled white sensibilities.”
We learn from these authors about the past, what we all know is
true today – that there were “at least two different and
competing value systems operating in eighteenth-century America,
and while it appears many of the enslaved were well aware that
their actions had meaning in both Euro-American and African American
worlds, only a few whites even dimly perceived this to be the case.” In
other words, our ancestors were conscious and alert to their pervasive
impact – how they were inadvertently bringing depth and cultural
wealth to the dominant cultural landscape – while Whites were ostensibly
oblivious.
Today, with quadrupled abilities and insight, much of our collective
sense of awareness is belly-up.
In this case, we find a brilliant group of
Black men, locked out of the gates of consciousness of the weight
of their impact. We
then find a domineering corporate executive making decisions that
come barreling down on their natural evolvement, and who is probably
keenly aware of their potential to transform the world if they
were only culturally and intellectually free.
We should all be clear about the however latent
intentions of this regulation. Our authors tell us that Whites, “were content
to dismiss” African culture as, “little more than unsuccessful
attempts by an inferior group to imitate white ways.” As Little
Richard has often reminded us, the real anxiety of whites is that
too many of them are emulating us. The authors remind us
of how enslaved Africans partook in “expressive” forms of dress
and music that were, “linked by an underlying rhythm, one that
was alien to Euro-American cultural forms.” And they tell us that
Whites reacted to our clothing, “as they did to our music, dance
and other forms of cultural display, disdaining the individual
elements but being impressed, in spite of themselves (italics
mine), by the total performance.” In other words, much as with
homophobia, they were staunchly bigoted and hateful, but loved
us for our presentation.
Now, for those who would rightly argue that
Black people across the country also support Stern’s new regulation, please consider
that controlling Black people are almost as much a dime a dozen
as White ones – and try to restrain any unjustified gloating. At
least two relevant points emerge from this discussion. The real
political/policy issue is the onslaught of the deliberate shutting
down of simple freedoms, and the ravaging of our critical Civil
Liberties. Be certain that this rule by Stern has a reinforcing
affect on other restrictive conservative edicts such as the Patriot
Act and infringements on our privacy. The important cultural/social
message these wealthy young men might use to strategize their next
play, is that “The South Carolina Negro Act of 1735 proved to be
unenforceable…partly because of black determination not to be
limited by it (italics mine).” And, with that I say
here’s to a fast-break to some 21st Century Black determination.
Terry Howcott is a Master of Social Work, Activist, Lecturer,
Writer and Thinker. She resides in Detroit, MI and can be reached
at [email protected] |