The Politics of Sagging Pants
Story by Christopher Patrick Nelson

For a generation, hip-hop fashion meant sagging pants, but recently, the Boston city government banned them. Why do rappers wear their jeans this way? Rap is based on jazz, funk, and soul samples – dance music – so why wear what will trip you up if you do more than move in place to the beat? Since Grandmaster Flash rhymed, “ It's like a jungle – sometimes it makes me wonder / how I keep from going under” to when the U.S. government assassinated Tupac Shakur till now, rappers have known they best be able to run from the police. Yet sagging pants will stumble you so officers can get you. So why does the hip-hop community continue to dress this way? Where does it come from?

Scholar Naomi Wolf says fashion follows politics – and the politics of being a survivor of the African Holocaust we call slavery are very simple. Our government wages constant war against Black people, not as genocide pure and simple, but as exploitation, as when corporations force Black prisoners to work for them in the slammer. Black jazz virtuoso Wynton Marsalis called his album before last, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. So, as noted rap scholar Vicente Joaqin Bacca told me once, a prison sentence becomes the right of passage for young men who come of age in the ghetto. Bacca explained that clothing issued to convicts often doesn't fit, so their pants sag off of their buttocks. The convicts get used to these ill-fitting garments because they have no choice, and then they get to like it. When they re-enter society on probation, these respected community elders continue to sag, which the youth who look up to them imitate. Gangster rappers shot Pan-African Arrested Development and Black civil rights activists Public Enemy off the charts nearly 20 years ago and never ceased fire, so sagging has remained in style. Just one problem occurs when we imitate the dress of our government's victims, however.

Officers profile. If you fit the profile of a person they seek to arrest, they will arrest you, and if your skin is not white, they will put you in jail and probably prison. Ex-convicts who I know are not writing this article, so I will tell you: Prison is not a vacation. If you are a woman, many guards, not one, will rape you. If you are a male, the other inmates will rape you unless you have a group. White racist gangs will probably not appeal to white fans of hip-hop. Gangsters will kill a member of the peaceful Cristiano s if he touches himself. As for Red and Blue, in South Central LA they shot a baby in a car seat because the baby wore red. If none of this sounds fun, the Muslims don't burn the other groups, but you had better hope your Imam doesn't declare a War, because you will have to roll. Oh, yes, and I forgot to mention – your wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend, or whoever will not be taking their sexy body into your cell with you for the length of your sentence. Prison is not a vacation.

Police profile kinky hair, broad noses, thick lips, and dark skin, and studies have shown that judges give harsher sentences to darker people. Don't change. Don't sell out. Understand, however, that hip-hop fashion changes. If you look at old pictures of the Furious Five and Run-DMC, their clothing represents the height of 70's and 80's hip-hop fashion, and their pants fit around their waists. Maybe it's time to bring back the Old School? Why not be a freak like Andre 3000 from Outkast and wear whatever? How about some comfortable sweat pants? Whatever you do, don't tell me I don't know how it is, because I just told you how it is. Boston City Hall goes too far with a ban, but they have a point.