Keeping It Real for April 19, 2008

• By TONY BROWN
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Apr 19, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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I was driving down Sherwood Forest Boulevard last week on my way to work, and, because it’s Baton Rouge, traffic was at a standstill. As I sat waiting for the light to change, I noticed a young man no more than 17 or 18 years old walking down the street. His shirt was slung off his shoulder, and his baggy pants sagged off his rear end so that the world could see his underwear. His stride was deliberate, and he seemed to move in time with the music blaring from a vehicle two places ahead of me. He bobbed his head and looked over at the driver and gave him a big smile, an unspoken acknowledgement that they had the same taste in music at least.

Normally, I’d give the scene a quick glance and turn my focus elsewhere, but I couldn’t help noticing how happy he appeared.

I will take a guess and say that he is aware of efforts by officials all over the state to ban his choice of fashion. If he was concerned about how people in that long line of cars judged his appearance, he didn’t show it.

Baggy clothes and sagging pants have been around for years. It’s been reported that young people picked up the fad from prison inmates and it gained credibility through the hip-hop industry.

The first report on efforts to “crack down on sag” that I could find in The Advocate’s archives was from August 1998.

According to a 2007 Advocate report, Alexandria, Shreveport, Delcambre, Lafourche Parish, Pointe Coupee Parish, Mansfield and Minden have passed ordinances or laws that impose fines, community service or counseling on anyone caught sagging. Penalties in Delcambre and Mansfield include fines and jail time.

On the state level, state Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-New Orleans, will try again to pass legislation banning the style after an unsuccessful effort when he was in the House in 2004. “All the different municipalities around the state saying they want it tells me that a state ban on this type of idiocy is needed,” Shepherd said.

I’m not a fan of sag, but I don’t think bad fashion rises to the level of criminal activity. Do we really think outlawing sagging pants will make them go away? Or a better question might be, does anyone wonder why young people are looking to prisons or even the media for role models to look up to and imitate? 

Fashion standards should be taught and enforced by parents. And it doesn’t hurt to have others around who have similar standards to act as role models.

In the 1970s, there was a tall, thin, neatly groomed man who sometimes volunteered at my elementary school. He dealt with us plainly and honestly. The fad at that time was to wear a bandanna either hanging out of your back pocket or tied around your knee.

Noticing how we were picking up on it — and I don’t know how it started — he challenged us, because we, like most young people, were just trying to fit in. He said, “Do you really think this is cool?”

It wasn’t just his words that made us think about it but the feeling that we didn’t want to disappoint someone we respected.

Role models don’t intentionally set standards; they just live in a way that inspires others to follow in their steps. What should be a crime is if the only role models our young people can find to imitate are those who are in prison, or in some cases the hip-hop industry.