A good take from Diverse Education: C. Emmanuel Little writes that some black men wear dress attire because we want to do so. In the face of the recent Mashable article about black men wearing suits to avoiding getting shot (who really thinks that works?) , Little informs readers of something that I can identify with well: appearance doesn't grant you immunity from reality:
"The painful truth is that one can dress like Fonzworth Bentley, write like Toni Morrison, and speak with erudition of Michael Eric Dyson and still die from simply being Black and breathing. You can never be “perfect” enough. Being among the best dressed on campus didn’t stop a tall Black male colleague of mine at another institution from being suspected by campus police of being an escaped inmate, despite being a tenured faculty member. Neither my suit nor my degrees saved me from being once assumed too incompetent to have written a program report myself. (Note: I did.)"
During my time on a college campus, both as a student and a professional, I had several "he can talk?!" moments- peers or colleagues seeming amazed that I could not only muster up competence that was on par with their abilities. When I went beyond average, the excuses started to pour in. The most glaring example of this mindset was when, during an open discussion in class, another student calmly explained that "the black students were admitted with lower test scores and GPAs". In her mind, us sitting together at the same school and in the same class could only be explained by a glitch in the system. No suit this side of Steve Harvey could've changed her mind about how we ended up at the same school.
I'm not the black guy from the Mashable article; I run a sponge twist through my high top fade and seldom wear a tie if I don't have to. That doesn't make me a threat, nor a racist-fighting rebel. Just someone who likes to dress the way they want to, independent from the insecurities of complete strangers.
