Imagine standing in line waiting to enter a bar with your friends. When it is your turn to pay your money to get in, the doorman tells you, “You cannot come in because your shirt is not tucked in and your pants are too big.” He also might tell you “your shoes are too white” or “you have too many chains on.” After you turn around, you notice he lets the others with their shirts tucked out in the bar. You may be very confused by now, but there is something very funny about this situation: you are not white. The sign on the door explains everything. It says FUBU shirts, baggy pants, untucked shirts and big chains are not allowed.
Although this bar has every right to have its own dress code, its existence must be brought into question. It may seem like nothing when you are that person who gets in every time you go, but when you are the one who is rejected because of the style of clothes you are wearing, then you understand what the big deal is. Obviously, bar owners do not just want to protect themselves. It seems they simply are striving to keep a certain group of people out — African Americans. Regardless of whether private bars may do what they want, this still is discrimination. To point out objective aspects of a culture and to assume that culture does bad things is stereotyping. Today it may not be as common, but the problem still exists because some cannot get over such ignorance that invaded people in the past.
The hip-hop culture has brought many aspects alive, including fashion. This fashion may include jerseys, jewelry and big clothes, which people always associate with rappers and “gangstas.” The culture that engages in these trends is not just rappers with money and nothing else to do. It is about a culture African Americans created, which expresses their thoughts, goals and dreams. According to an interview with Bakari Kitwana, author of “The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture,” artists such as Notorious B.I.G. and TuPac always were talking to the “hustlers” who were struggling on the “block.” Clearly, this culture is their way of expressing themselves and their own life experiences. If it were not for their music and the hip-hop industry, then where would they have been?
Surely nothing is wrong with embracing your culture with your own ideas of what it is to be who you are. When people reject a culture and are not open to what it brings, then they also reject that group of people. Although the rejection may be indirect because discrimination is illegal, there is still that feeling of not being wanted in the larger text.
Of course, these people never will come out directly and say they do not want blacks in their bar. This would just be too much for them to handle. No, instead, they make ways around this by taking objects associated with African Americans and rejecting those. What they want is to make sure their environment is not disrupted.
An environment with only white people is completely fictional. Different people walk on LSU’s campus every day as well as in many other places. To be around the same people of the same background is not real.
It already is enough that minorities may feel uncomfortable going to a predominantly white university. Why make the experience even more uncomfortable? If African Americans do not speak out, then what is this saying about the community in which they live?
If steps are not taken, these people will keep discriminating against others, thinking they have won the fight. However, the fight has just begun.
As Kitwana said, “the older generation hasn’t been able to take things any further. But they did their part [civil rights and black power]. These were no small feats, and they should be applauded and celebrated for giving us such a formidable foundation. Now it’s time for us to step up.”