This has been going on in my neighborhood for some years now, black (usually) teenagers walking around with their pants down below their hips and their underwear showing.
A lot of people are disgusted by it. Some even want to ban the practice. But recently I had a little thought experiment and reached a different conclusion.
Let's say you are one of these young fashion victims and you decide to rob someone. What do you do? I mean, how do you do it if you only have one hand free, if you need the second hand to hold your pants up?
Now you could put on a belt. But now you're not fashionable. Now you look less like a menacing black teenager and more like an 80-year old Floridian looking for the early bird special. Your victim may be inclined to laugh at you. They're certainly on notice, when you hitch up your pants and draw the belt tight, that something is about to go down. Which means they're forewarned.
OK, let's say you have a gun in one hand. You point it at your victim, say, “give me the money.” But the other hand is on your pants. If you try to take the money from the victim your pants fall down. Or you could hand them the gun, in which case you're the one being robbed.
But let's say you manage to get the victim's money. How are you going to get away? You ever try running with one hand holding your pants up? Ever try running with your pants hanging off you every which way? You don't go very fast. If you try to get an arm swing and get more speed, of course, your pants fall down completely.
Putting this as delicately as I can, pants on the ground is no way to dress if you have any intentions of committing a crime. You're practically wearing shackles.
Which may, subconsciously, be the intention. Create a fashion statement that prevents the person involved from committing a crime. Use their pride to make them shackle themselves.
Despite incredibly high black youth unemployment, the crime rate remains modest. Could the fashionistas' plan be working? Or could this, somehow, be the work of the fashion victims themselves. I don't want to get mad. I don't want to rob someone or hurt someone. How can I dress so that becomes impossible? I got it – wear my pants below my hips so if I'm tempted to commit a crime my pants will fall down!
There are authority figures that have a great disapproval of pants on the ground. I don't want to discourage them here. I suspect that if authority figures told young black men, “go ahead, wear your pants like that, I'm not offended, I think it makes you less dangerous,” that there would be a run on leather belts.
Anyway, when I see one of these young men walking down the street, their long boxer underwear showing (imagine the chafing) I just nod and try to look very serious.
But inside I'm laughing my ass off.
