Saggy Pants, Talking White and the Obama Bully Pulpit

Published July 15, 2009 at 6:48 p.m.

The issue of “saggy pants” has functioned like a social panic in some municipalities, where local officials have sought to pass ordinances banning sagging pants, as the style is thought, by some, to be evidence of criminality among young black men.  The town of Delcambre, LA did in fact pass such an ordinance, punishable by 6-months in jail and a $500.00 fine.  The city of Opa Locka, FL - banned sagging pants in city parks and public buildings.  Additionally, the city of Dallas funded a series of public service announcements denouncing saggy pants, equating the practice with homosexuality. It was

in this context that a MTV viewer asked then Senator Obama about saggy pants, when he sat down with MTV News days before the November election.  During that interview, Obama made the now famous comment, “brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What’s wrong with that? Come on.”

Within days of Obama’s pronouncement, numerous television news programs and newspapers ran stories about Obama denouncing saggy pants. Obama’s comments taken out of context could easily be read as an admonishment of young black men and by extension, the influence of hip-hop culture.  In fact, Obama prefaced his comments by stating “I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time…any public official that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there.”  But as a politician, Obama also knew that his comments about saggy pants represented a “win-win” for him; he would gain traction with undecided voters who hoped that he would provide a moral center for a youth culture supposedly gone awry, while serving as a non-issue for the hip-hop community that he had so deftly recruited in support of his campaign.  Quiet as it’s kept, the saggy pants style is largely passé with regards to hip-hop generation masculinity, as some of the most highly visible and highly compensated hip-hop figures such as Sean Combs, Sean Carter, Curtis Jackson and even the recently incarcerated Clifford Harris, Jr. are more often than not, seen in public wearing business attire.

Yet while Obama’s carefully crafted response was intended to offend no one who might have potentially voted for him, his comments have taken on a life of their own, utilized to organize anti-sagging dress code efforts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and public high schools, like Plantation High School in South Florida which recently sponsored a “Pull Up Your Pants Day.” That this sudden inspiration, which often takes place within the context of black communities, long grappling with how to relate to and control the young men in their communities, should not be surprising. President Obama’s stance on the issue has simply been used to shame black youth into “normalcy.”

Underlying this push towards routine sartorial choices is a troubling class dynamic, rooted in a century-old (if not longer) debate amongst Black Americans about the proper presentation of blackness in mainstream culture. Michele Obama’s comments about “talking white,” puts this dynamic in particular focus.

At a recent Women’s History Month event with Washington, DC Public School students and prominent women like Dr. Mae C. Jemison, Alfre Woodard and Alicia  Keys, Michele Obama told a gathering of students that when she was growing up “I remember there were kids around my [Chicago] neighborhood who would say, ‘Ooh, you talk funny. You talk like a white girl.’ I heard that growing up my whole life. I was like, “I don’t even know what that means but I am still getting my A.”

Like the President’s comments about saggy pants, Ms. Obama’s reflections were prominently featured in the next day’s news cycle. The notion of “talking white” and “acting white” have long been bandied about in black communities, but for a nation that has historically chosen to be oblivious to the inner dynamics of Black life in America, such a discussion elicits a fresh focus.  It was just last year that perennial protest candidate Ralph Nader accused then Senator Obama of “talking white” as part of Obama’s effort to assuage white voter fears that he might be cut from the same cloth of traditional Civil Rights leaders. Nader’s comments would have been offensive, if not for the fact that there are quite a few Black Americans who also read diction as an index of racial authenticity.

Ironically, only days earlier, President Obama appeared on ESPN to announce his NCAA Basketball bracket and in response to Andy Katz’s query about whether the President stayed up to watch an overtime game during the Big East Tournament, Obama dropped this ditty: “I can’t be staying up until 2 in the morning…I’ve got work to do.”

President Obama’s “can’t be staying…” uttered in what linguists refer to as standard black vernacular (BE), was much like his “nah we straight” response at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, DC late last year.  How can the man who Nader accused of “acting white” be so adept at standard black vernacular?

As Nia-Malika Henderson writes, Obama’s “language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with is black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences.” But President Obama is  not unique; he is representative of at least three generations of Black Americans who have mastered the practice of switching codes – folk who move fluidly and fluently through multiple linguistic communities, with the understanding that so-called mainstream American vernacular (talking white) was critical for putting Whites - at ill ease because of their presence in the workplace or other places of business – at ease.

Indeed, because we rarely see the “private” Michele Obama we have little knowledge of how adept her own control of BE is, but her husband clearly has more pressure to navigate the tensions between making a nation of folk comfortable and being read as “authentic.”

There were many that read Ms. Obama’s “talking white” comments as rooted in Black middle class elitism, while others saw her comments as evidence of the bankruptcy of Black American culture, particularly in reference to the use of what is often ignorantly referred to as “black slang.”

The Obamas have little control over the ways their simple gestures will be utilized by others, even if it’s the Black Middle Class gatekeepers trying to reign in the black poor or conservative ideologues who want to use the family’s success as ammunition to further erode the gains of the Civil Rights era. Nevertheless, this sudden focus on the intricacies of black life may finally help this nation get the story of race in this country right.