Since the early 20th century, African-Americans have found ways to appropriate European dress into a style that reflects their own cultural experiences. Throughout the years there have been numerous examples to illustrate this point(black intellectual dress during the Harlem Renaissance, militant black dress of the civil rights movements in the 1960's, and the funky colorful dress of the 1970's). Most of black style has come out social and political contexts and have been direct criticisms of American political and social value systems. This blog purpose is to analyze the roles dress plays in black identity in the United States, and discuss issues that largely involve dress black culture generally and the hip-hop cultural movement in more specific instances.
Style, appearance, clothing, ornament, adornment are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. However, a more general and comprehensive term that articulates these classifications is dress: an assemblage of modifications of the body and or supplements to the body(Eicher&Roach-Higgins,1992). Dressing includes hairstyles, body piercings, tattoos, jewelry, garments, scents and other categories of items added to the body as supplements.
My blog began with a piece on an American iconic piece of clothing: the white t-shirt. Entitled The Tall T and Black Masculinity, this post discusses and illustrates the influence that rap/hip-hop music has on fashion and dress culture. It also analyzes black masculinity. Following the post about t-shirts is a post called Black Bar Behavior, which was my response to personally experiencing racial profiling and witnessing racial prejudice in bars and nightclubs solely based on dress and music. After Black Bar Behavior, I wrote The Current State of Female Dress to present the issues that seemed to me the most significant in influencing the black female body in hip-hop in relation to apparel. Redefining Iconic was my next attempt to present another traditional American icon in style. My goal was to present the foundational principle around the original design of the baseball cap, and then to offer examples of how African-American and hip-hop culture have adapted, not only the baseball cap, but other Anglo-Saxon/Western European styles into their own unique visual expressions. With the post entitled Identity Through Language I wanted to look at the verbal expression side of the African-American/Black aesthetic, and analyze how groups are stereotyped and prejudiced by the language they choose to use. The inspiration for that blog stemmed from the Novel Tuff, Paul Beatty and the book's protagonist Winston "Tuffy" Foshay. The most recent post was a response to an article from The Village Voice by Tom Breihan called Why Do Rappers Keep Quitting? which dealt with the sudden but increasing early "retirement" of unseasoned potentially legendary quality rappers.
Some of the ideas I will continue to discuss will include: particularities of black dress in the United States, social reactions to African-American dress in public spaces, the establishment of black group identity through style, the effectiveness of dress and more particularly style as a form of non-verbal communication, and the priority of dress when discourse is considered.
1 comment:
This is a really strong blog -- many ideas and concepts are at play in the essays.
There is also a want for more clearly defined arguments. Specifically, the introduction needs a declarative argument about what clothing means in general and what it means in hip-hop and the meaning of hip-hop.
Hammering your overarching argument early in the introduction helps readers understand what your critical philosophy is and how it operates when you begin examining subjects like baseball hats (they were invented and sold long before 1954, try 1900) and tall Ts. As well, in the individual pieces, as you are framing specific arguments, the links to your overarching claim will be seen more clearly.
That's not to say that the work is weak. It is thoughtful and often well-written. It is work that one could return to, expand, and make into publishable work.
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