My friend recently sent a video with a Black judge admonishing a young lady for wearing a durag to court. The woman tried to defend herself by explaining that it was part of Black culture.

This only irritated the judge further.

“Excuse me. I’m Black, and guess what? I’m not wearing a durag…because I’m in a courtroom. Not only am I not wearing a durag, I’m not picking up unauthorized used or criminal cases, so please, don’t try to tell me about Black culture….I know more about Black culture than you, and I respect the Black culture by remembering that my ancestors were slaves, and I’m not going out picking up criminal cases”- Judge Boyd

This exchange is a microcosm of a larger discussion that seems to come and go but always persists in the background of the Black community.

It recently made its way into the mainstream news again.

Tuskegee University, an HBCU, updated its dress code by banning bonnets and durags in classrooms and the cafeteria. What should have been a debate kept inside of the community has leaked to the public, and everyone has an opinion.

Although most people speak on this topic as if it is black and white, my thoughts are a bit more complex.

As an older person, the intention feels obvious. The university wants to prepare the students for the real world. Yes, you have class at 8 am, but many jobs start early and with a longer commute. Most jobs are not okay with someone showing up in slippers and a durag.

Dr. Mark Anthony Brown, the president of Tuskegee University, called it practice.

Durags and bonnets are specifically Black, and so this specification feels extremely targeted when outsiders look in. However, this is what I mean when I say this discussion was meant to be private.

This probably wasn’t so much about durags and bonnets, but presenting professionally. Still, all roads lead to the same conclusion for many people. This is just another form of respectability politics.

Respectability politics, a term coined by Evelyne Brooks Higginbotham, is when a marginalized group attempts to dress and act a certain way to be accepted by the majority group. To simplify it for this discussion, it is when Black people dress nicely to impress white people.

It has been proven again and again, no matter how well we dress, how refined our speech, how independent our finances, they will always attempt to tear it down.

Respectability politics don’t work.

However, is that really what is going on at Tuskegee University?

Growing up in the 90s, I only remember dress code being truly prevalent in two arenas of my life: school and church.

At school, the dress code mostly targeted the girls because the boys apparently could not control themselves if they saw too much shoulder. The only thing the boys had to worry about was pulling up their pants. I’m not sure how I so often failed to wear a belt, but I remember all of my clothes being far too big. I wasn’t the most stylish kid, so I’m not sure how much of that was choice versus this is what I own.

However, I do know I chose my clothing on Sundays. I don’t remember why my mother eventually gave in and started allowing me to wear whatever I wanted to church, but I’m sure I fought her on it for years.

It mirrors what some of the professors said at Tuskegee University: at least the kids are in the class and ready to learn.

Either way, I spent many weekdays using most of my time pulling my pants up to avoid detention, and I spent my weekends wearing a T-shirt and too big jeans while everyone around me dressed in their Sunday best.

In 2004, a celebrity who has since fallen from grace called for Black people to pull up their pants. It was the first time I could comprehend the respectability politics debate.

The celebrity went on to blame single mothers and “Black” names like Shaniqua for society’s problems. He implied racism was a scapegoat for the failures of the Black community.

Clearly, he is coming from an angle of privilege here. He was rich from selling a safe style of Blackness, and the mindset is “if I did it, you can do it too.”

These are the same talking points some white people use when presented with the topic of systemic racism. Don’t be a victim. Pull up your pants, and you will be successful.

I hope I’ve made it clear that I don’t buy into respectability politics, but is that really what’s going on at Tuskegee University?

Culture or cap

I stumbled across another video while thinking about this topic. In this one, a Black judge seemingly has to tell multiple people each day how to dress for court. Although these were online court hearings, it is still shocking to see so many adults show up in bonnets or tank tops (and sometimes less).

Dr. Brown called it practice.

Many students responded that they know they can’t wear bonnets to work, but here we have so many people showing up to court seemingly clueless. I’m not implying that these people graduated from Tuskegee University, but they missed the memo somewhere that this isn’t how you dress to tend to business.

“Ah ha!” I hear you declare. “LG just wants us to conform to the white man’s rules. He wants us to dress to impress the white man.”

I’m going to tell you a little secret. Plenty of white people don’t want to dress up either. They want to wear their ball caps and their tank tops and their ripped jeans.

I imagine the two judges I mentioned here and the president of Tuskegee University wouldn’t complain if someone showed up wearing a dashiki. The same even goes for traditional head wraps. If this is really about culture, let’s talk about that.

For the most part, wearing bonnets and durags to class and court are just signs of laziness. If we use culture to justify laziness, we lose the power to use culture when it matters.

Respectability politics tend to fall across two lines: the socioeconomic divide and the generational divide.

I’m not as poor as I used to be (teacher salary allows me to eat three meals a day and have money left over for rent), and I’m kind of old now. I try to remember what it felt like to be young and poor and have some old rich guy tell me how to dress.

I know now that age brings a bit of wisdom. This doesn’t mean give up your identity or conform to social norms, but it does mean apply pressure when you are walking into a place of business. If you want to talk about style and culture, bring your fly. I’ve never seen anyone bring fly with bedroom bonnets and slippers.