Deglamorizing street style - Column

Last Thanksgiving I had the extreme good fortune of dining at a party where the estimable author Toni Morrison was a guest. At the same party I also had the extreme misfortune of sharing turkey with a recent Ivy League graduate posing as a B-boy, who spent most of the evening rubbing his designer dreads, name-dropping rappers he'd encountered and mumbling in a slangy drawl worthy of Bell Biv Devoe.

Despite his high-priced education, this doctor's son postured about the room like an exile from Yo! MTV Raps trapped in a Harveys Bristol Cream billboard. While Ms. Morrison spoke eloquently about the changes Clinton might make, the pseudo B-boy mumbled about how corny the gathering was. Then, to my horror, he sat down next to Ms. Morrison!

"Why you got to have a brother fucking a cow?" he asked. This was his "critical" response to a couple of passages in Beloved. The great writer's face sure suggested disbelief at his crude question. Later a relative told me he'd adopted this street persona in college as his protest against White society and middle-class morality. Oh. I thought he was just an idiot.

While this upper-class clown is an extreme case, his behavior does raise an important issue: How do we make nonstreet style cool for young brothers and sisters? We associate current street stylings with hip-hop, but in the past, blues, bebop and soul have been our reference points. The problem is that a lot of New Jacks don't see alternative approaches to manhood as empowering.

In the nineties we're confronted with a ghettocentric mentality that thinks speaking proper English is "acting White," that academic achievement is "learning the White man's lesson," and that Blackness is synonymous with lewdness. Part of it is rebellion against mainstream norms of behavior that are perceived as emasculating. Part of it is a lack of class in the current culture that probably has dapper Duke Ellington turning over in his tuxedo.

Preaching alone will not turn the tide. The limitations of this attitude must be held up to ridicule. It must be made "unhip" to be inarticulate. We as a community of creative people must work to make intellectual curiosity, not ghetto dogma, the African-American cutting edge. And this movement won't be as easy as crushing a bunch of rap records with a truck.

Against the potency of street knowledge, a mix of old and new icons must be raised. Right now too few men with a personal style that suggests grace under pressure and whose elegance arose from a cultivation of knowledge are in the spotlight. We need young Sidney Poitiers and Julian Bonds. Wynton and Branford Marsalis, in their different ways, have tried valiantly to fit the bill. Filmmakers Spike Lee and Reginald Hudlin probably come closest to this aesthetic, since both are aggressive, poised and committed to nonghettocentric visions of African-Americans. The groups of Black professionals around the country that are mentoring young teens are doing exactly the right thing. We must begin to celebrate men with brains over brawn whenever possible.

Women can play a key role in deglamorizing street style. Every time a drug dealer, with his jeep, beeper and gold, gets the best-looking girl in high school a message is sent. Every time New Jack City's villain Nino Brown is called sexy or young women embrace "the gangsta bitch" persona, a message is sent that materialism is attractive, that crime pays and that nastiness has its rewards. Ladies, granting bad boys sexual favors and "dissing" bookworms is a questionable judgment call in terms of values.

Compare the Phoenix Suns' Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson, for example. Because Barkley has embraced the wild side of his nature he's gotten TV ads and international notoriety. He's a b-a-a-a-a-d brother. Yes, he deserves his props. But we in the Black community should be paying equal attention to Johnson. Aside from having mad B-ball skills, Johnson may be the NBA's only point guard who reads Hegel and Freud for fun. Now that's flavor in my book.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group