What We Talk About When We Talk About Hoodies

[charlie and algernon]

It couldn't have just been you or me or the Magic. It had to be the Heat. Not simply because the Heat play in Miami, the home of Trayvon Martin, who was killed in late February after leaving a 7-Eleven, in Sanford, Florida, with a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. Not simply because LeBron James and Dwyane Wade understand the meaning of statement clothes. But because, suddenly, the Heat understand the power of statements. A team whose dominance in the last two seasons stems from one of the tackiest, most egotistical events in the history of sports media had now devised one of the classiest, most egoless.

(SNIP)

The Miami Heat didn't say anything. They put on pullover sweatshirts whose hoods concealed their faces, stood somewhere in a Michigan hotel, and posed for a picture that James posted on Twitter. It's a devastating image. Thirteen men with brown skin and black outerwear, not looking at you. Your pulse quickens when you see it. Your heart stops. Your skin pimples — at the mournful sense of peace and containment of agitation. Your brain twists: The man who concocted the Decision also orchestrated this?

(SNIP)

LeBron James arrived in Miami from Cleveland's humble, industrial climes, and he and Dwyane Wade fell in sartorial love. Together, they stood at the league's style vanguard. They made mistakes. Still, even as a tandem fiasco they demonstrated courage. They gave us ideas. But the upscaling took a large part of the sport away from the streets where, for a generation, it had thrived. The league made a demand, and the players met it. If the Heat photo doesn't officially reverse what the players had to forsake, it certainly evokes what they can no longer wear to work.

That's the shame you sense. There's an inarguable benefit to having these players dress more like adults and advertise how else a black male could dress. But the players were also complicit in allowing the league to perpetuate the stigma against a staple of youth attire. In shedding their $2,000 handbags and $900 shoes for sweatshirts worn with the hoods up, James and Wade and the rest of the team aligned themselves with the Trayvons of the world and, in a sense, against the league. The photo wasn't taken while the team was on the clock, but it constitutes a rebellion all the same. And it spoke to the dual class and race consciousness inherent in American professional basketball. Here was a team of very well-off black men dolefully identifying with the children they're paid to stop being. It doesn't mean the suits are bad, but it doesn't mean the hoodies are, either.

Standing there with their shrouded heads hung low, the Heat looked like a cultural neighborhood watch. These famous men were a pointed tribute to the power of anonymity (however momentarily they, too, weren't recognizable) and a vision of grave solidarity that rebuked the George Zimmermans and Geraldo Riveras of the world: Kill one of us, you kill us all.

Much more here: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7764334/trayvon-martin-miami-heat-talk-talk-hoodies

[msongs]

1. sweats with hoods are great on a cold and windy day nt

[MineralMan]

2. Yah, well, here's another kind of hoodie that may be in play

in Sanford, FL. They've been popular there in the past:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/01/1079682/-Sanford-Florida-s-Troubled-History-of-Racial-Injustice-Prejudice

See this, also:

http://www.zimbio.com/Cynthia+Lynch/articles/55ojpR2g_la/Trayvon+Martin+Killing+Sanford+KKK+Past+Come

[Warpy]

3. What we talk about when we talk about hoodies is poverty

because the rich kids wear their cashmere coats with the collars turned up, silk blend scarves around their necks, and caps of some description. Poor kids are the ones who are stuck with the hooded sweatshirts under windbreaker jackets (if they're lucky and the pickings at the thrift shop have been good) on those cold and windy days.

There is nothing scarier to a suburbanite living paycheck to paycheck than a person who is living closer to the edge than he is. He knows that desperate feeling of month left over after the money runs out and what he's contemplated doing about it and it scares the hell out of him to see people who are even worse off.

[dwig3d]

4. Jesus wore a hoodie!

[1monster]

5. Except, the hoodie is ubiquitous among middle and high school kids today.

In Florida,we don't often need winter coats. Once in a while, yeah, but not often. But it can and does get get quite chilly here in the winter. Hoodies are pretty much the universal choice for cold weather gear. My winter coat is a all weather water resistant shell line with fleece and has a hood.

The kids, almost all, boys and girls, of all colors wear hoodies to school in all kinds of weather. The hoodie is as ubiquitous as bell bottomed jeans were to the early to mid seventies.

It really doesn't say anything about anyone, except that kids tend to dress alike in every generation.