The Dress Code Hypocrisy
- Sep 20, 2019
- 4 min read
Hello all,
So, the most recent Facebook outrage making the rounds locally here in Maryland is a new Crab restaurant that instituted a rather strict dress code. Here is one of the initial tweets of outrage and a picture of the dress code rules:
Here is a list of the dress code rules for those with impaired vision or the lazy:
Strictly Prohibited:
Excessively Baggy Clothing
(Pants must be worn at the waist, no shorts below the knee)
Offensive, Vulgar, or Inappropriate Attire
Athletic Attire (Sweats or Gym Clothes)
Jerseys (Except on Ravens/Orioles Game Days)
Brimless Headgear (bandanas, beanies, etc)
Backwards or Sideways Hats (Must be worn forward)
Work and Construction Boots
Sunglasses After Dark
Children and Young Adults under 21 after 10pm
Electronic Smoking Device Use
So, the first kneejerk twitter/facebook reaction from many was that this establishment is racist and doesn’t want black people in. This has been a local feud which received enough minority (as in social media minority) outrage that it got some traction in the Washington Post.
The restaurant has since relaxed their dress code policy. However, they have also pointed out that many other establishments in their area have similar or even stricter policies and have so for years:
Really, I think the reason this particular company has gotten such flak is probably due to the fact that they’re a crab house, generally regarded as a place for less stringent attire requirements. I really have never heard of people accusing Ruth Chris of being discriminatory in their very strict dress code because, well, people expect a fancy steak house to be like that.
Going back to simply discussing the outrage over the initial dress code rules of this and other establishments, I can see where some people get the notion that it is unfairly targeting African Americans, based on the supposedly targeting of specific clothing/styles.
However, I think this list is somewhat of a Rorscharch test for how Triggered you can be. I look at that list and I imagine white frat bros, prevalent amongst Fells Point on many a Friday and Sat eve, being barred from the door. Do they not often stereo-typically wear jerseys, brimless headgear, athletic attire, and do they not often vape? Is the restaurant not unfairly targeting them? How about poor white people? I imagine overweight white lower class people with baggy clothes or sweat pants from Walmart or work boots from the construction yard being denied entry. Where is the outrage for them?
My point is that people look at this list and take their fears and the current divisive and racist climate of our culture and project it onto this list. You think establishments and mainstream white culture is fearful of young African Americans? Then you see a racist restaurant unfairly targeting said group under the guise of propriety.
Would this list possibly bar more black people from entry than white? Possibly, but blaming that on the restaurant and not the long history of socio economic issues and the cultural implications of said issues is like focusing on a mold problem in your basement when the cause is the water damage from your entire house flooding. It’s only looking at the surface level and blaming the symptoms, not the cause.
The true obstacle that this dress code is instituting is a class based one. It is saying “If you’re poor and you look poor, you’re not allowed in.” The fact that African American and other minorities are disproportionately represented by the poorer class is due to a multitude of reasons such as discriminatory practices with redlining neighborhoods and barring minorities from property ownership or business loans back during the mid 20th century:
Sure, straight up overt racist policies were banned over 50 years ago, but the effects of entire generations of oppression and before that, of course, slavery, is still being felt today, even in supposedly non racist policies.
A bank denying a loan to an African American family nowadays because they have terrible credit and little to no assets or wealth to their name is entirely legal and non discriminatory on the surface today. Most banks would argue that they would do the same for any white family and that a computer algorithm is the one deciding who does and doesn’t get loans based on many risk factors.
But you look back at WHY that African American family is in such poor states and lacks wealth and it all goes back to previous generations of hardship and discrimination keeping poor black families poor;
“Eight generations later, the racial wealth gap is both yawning and growing. The typical black family has just 1/10th the wealth of the typical white one. In 1863, black Americans owned one-half of 1 percent of the national wealth. Today it’s just over 1.5 percent for roughly the same percentage of the overall population. The cause of that stagnation has largely been invisible, hidden by the assumption of progress after the end of slavery and the achievements of civil rights. But for every gain black Americans made, people in power created new bundles of discrimination, largely hidden from sight, that thwarted, again and again, the economic promise of emancipation.”
Fixing these issues takes generations of work and is very complicated. I don’t have the answer. I definitely don’t think the Republican partys’ answer of “Racism is over, go pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop taking my tax money, you welfare queens” isn’t quite where we should go.
We need an honest look at what it means to be poor in America. What it means to work multiple minimum wage jobs to get by and have no healthcare and no family with any money who can help you out and what it means to grow up in impoverished neighborhoods with every card stacked against you.
I know that becoming enraged at the wrong things like a business instituting a higher class dress code policy that is pretty standard for many other upscale restaurants in the area is aiming your energy and ire at the wrong issue. We need to see the flood past the mold, people.
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