Player Hating

http://www.blackcommentator.com/156/156_howcott_player_hating.html
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
Terrylynnh@xxxxxxxxx


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