The city of Paterson, New Jersey is considering a ban on baggy pants.   The baggy, saggy drawers look is apparently too much for the city council of the North Jersey town who are contemplating fining people for the offense.   Councilman Anthony Davis is spearheading the measure, introducing a bill that would make wearing baggy pants a violation of Paterson’s indecency laws.  

I was forced to wonder how much of this is about race and/or class upon reading this.   Then I discovered that Councilman Davis is in fact African-American which placed this rights infringing measure squarely in the “classism” column.   The baggy-saggy look obviously had its origins in the young African-American community in this country. Often these days the look is banned in an effort to maintain a certain clientele and keep a certain “element” out at certain nightclubs, some of the few places where discrimination, of all sorts, is not only alive and well, but also part of the draw for many club-goers.   But the style has grown and expanded to include multiple races, making it a statement of a subculture that spans across the old boundaries.  

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