HATS, T-SHIRTS, JACKETS, AND BITCHES, IN THE ‘HOOD
Bitches; in the past a term applied to women who were crabby and argumentative, or as feminists would say, unwilling to submit to male dominance. It was an inappropriate descriptor in the late 1960s through the 1990s, as far as I knew, and it was seldom used.
Pre-dating that, in the early 1960s, bitchin’ was a term of joy. “We had a bitchin’ time yesterday. The surf was perfect.” “That woody is bitchin’ isn’t it?” This usage faded with the decline in the popularity of surfing after it had reached fad-level status. In the subsequent days of hippies, bitch was returned to the drawer of negativity. I remember some of my high school classmates, girls, referring to female adults as bitches, however, the word didn’t mean any woman, just crabby and argumentative ones.
Then, in the 2000s, I heard the B-word used to describe any female. A boy named Edwin often stayed after school and socialized with his peers, or his teachers at times. Ms. Navarene and I met one afternoon to plan, and in the lee of this meeting, Edwin drifted in to my classroom. He and Navarene engaged in a discussion as I entered grades into my computer. Apparently they were discussing male/female relations, dating partners, boyfriend-girlfriend.
I heard Navarene suggest to Edwin, “How about Kim, she’s really nice?”
Edwin’s response was a bit of a shock, “Nah, I don’t go for Asian bitches.”
“WHAT?” Ms. Navarene and I both erupted in medium level scolding, something similar to, “Never, ever, use that word about women!”
The culture of rappers and gangsters (gangstarz) was borne out with tags of M-O-B, sometimes even written in pen on someone’s knuckles.
“What does that mean, M-O-B?”
“Money Over Bitches.”
“Does your mother know what that means?”
“Uh, no.”
Money over bitches meant that to be a stand-up guy, a player, they needed to continue to hustle instead of waste time with girls. “Sell Yo Dope” was a name of a song, and MOB was an instruction of sorts. Now, this is not to say that these boys were selling drugs, but they wanted to play like they were. I remember my high school days. For some of my acquaintances, heroin users were, in a way, admired.
Many years later, a student named Miguel was lazing around after school, chatting with us in Ms. Duval’s class. I believe Ms. Marin was also present. One of us had asked this boy where his pal, Stephan had been. Miguel replied that Stephan was in jail.
“Oh my God,” one of us exclaimed, “Why?’
“He hit his bitch.” Big explosion, from all three of us, and Miguel shrunk down and apologized.
“That word is UNACCEPTABLE!” and similar chastising comments came from all of us. “Would you use that word about your mother? Of course you wouldn’t!” More shrinking.
What is school for but to learn, right? Miguel learned not to use that word around people like us. Hopefully he dropped that word from his vocabulary. Probably not.
One day I walked into the gym and saw a student working on basketball skills with his mentor. The student wore a T-shirt with the words, “Fuck Bitches – Get Money”. I approached the pair, and stated my objections. His mentor told him to take off the shirt.
Here are some pictures showing the unique gangstar attitude. I personally photographed these shirts on the Richmond High campus. Considering these messages one at a time, here are my thoughts:
First Amendment support for the Second Amendment, modernized
I support the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I couldn’t detect support or advocacy of criminal conduct in this message, and I reasoned that this jacket decoration related to both the First and Second Amendments. I have heard an account about the disciplining of a boy who chewed off parts of a Pop Tart so it resembled a handgun. True or not, it seems ridiculous. Going out on a limb here, I will opine that boys love guns. They represent power, and adulthood, and are a manifestation of the brilliance of man.
While a nine-inch diameter basketball is thrown through an 18-inch hole, and a 1.68-inch dimpled golf ball is put into a hole in the ground lined with a cup that is four and a quarter inches across, a .311” pointed oblong of copper and lead is typically directed toward a target of varying sizes, but at a higher velocity. The basketball needs to travel at about 18 miles per hour for a three-point shot to swish, and a golf ball leaves the club head at speeds between 148 and 180 miles per hour. A bullet shot from an AK47 travels at 1634 miles an hour.
Of course, the rifle gives a person the capability of inflicting far worse damage on another, human, or other animal, than the golf ball. In comparison the basketball is vegan. And that power is attractive to boys. When I was a child the rifle of choice was the lever-action rifle, as developed by John Moses Browning for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Then of course the Tommy Gun seemed so cool, both in the hands of federal agents and WW2 GIs. Boys like guns, and boys in the hood are double-dosed with that like.
Yo! Yo! Yo Ma! Yo-Yo Ma?
This shirt is a bit sketchier. A song by Trey One Foe called Back Doe begins thusly:
You gotta watch ya bacc doe
Fucc around and get bacc doe
STL keep a strap yo
Ya homies comin thru ya bacc doe
You gotta lock ya bacc doe
Fucc around and get bacc doe
STL keep a strap yo
I assume BACK DOE KINGS is a figurative reference to things that are not in your immediate field of view, or events you are not paying attention to at the moment. STL keep a strap yo, is a reference to St. Louis and keeping a gun close by, maybe.
And then this graphic, featured full on, on a T-shirt.
Probably probable cause to search the student’s pockets, backpack, and locker?
I was incredulous when I first saw that one, considering the presence of School Resource Officers, Richmond Police officers assigned to our campus. I assumed that the T-shirt would constitute probable cause for a search of clothing and backpack. Again, looking back to my high school days, I remember the fascination with Braunstein Freres’ Zig-Zag rolling papers. I had a T-shirt with the Zig Zag man on it. The Zig Zag shirt would have got me searched at some school campuses, but the F-word on the Coke shirt above would have gotten me suspended. At Richmond High there was too much to attend to at times, so minor improprieties slipped through. Before you ask, this shirt preceded The Cocaine Bear by a dozen or more years.
Imagine your teenaged boy walking out of the house wearing this sign of respect toward women.
It is important to realize that these students wore their garments out of the house in the morning, and entered campus displaying these messages. These adolescents often bought clothing with images that seemed cool and hip to them, without really thinking about meaning. Three other images prevalent on clothing in the 2005-2010 era were dollar signs ($), 100-dollar bills, and a brilliance-cut gem. These were printed mostly on sweatshirts, two or three inches across, evenly distributed across the garment, in the style of 1950s wallpaper.
Hats. Fucking HATS! When I was in high school hardly anyone wore ball caps. In college some of the local kids wore Stetson-style cowboy hats, and that was a statement; I am a rancher! But the front-bill ball cap seems to have started in the late 1970s. I guess it started with rural school kids wearing John Deere hats.
People in the ‘hood were wearing NY Yankees or LA Dodgers hats – blue - or hats of sports teams that were red, usually Cincinnati Reds. That related to the split between Norteño and Sureño, northerners and southerners. Not like the War Between the States, Union versus Confederate, but established Latinos in California del Norte, and recent immigrants from Mexico. Norteños wore red, and Sureños blue.
A few times students showed me pictures of gang-bangers with one color bandana over their nose and mouth, and hat on head, as they stood on a bandana of the opposite color. That was meant to be a challenge; Oooh, look, I’m standing on YOUR COLOR!
A similar intra-ethnic division is shown in Gangs of New York, an excellent, fact-based movie about Irish gangs and the struggle between native-born people of Irish descent, and fresh arrivals from Ireland during the Potato Famine in the 1840’s, continuing through the 1860’s. In some cases the division was also Catholic versus Protestant. As part of my US History curriculum I showed Gangs of New York, to teach several concepts. Among those are the above-mentioned conflict between immigrant waves, the decrepit condition of the Five Points neighborhood of New York City, the Draft Riots – which featured the US Navy firing cannons into Manhattan, and the stark, anti-Black sentiment present in some New Yorkers.
In Richmond violence was often between residents of North Richmond, an unincorporated region of Contra Costa County, and Central Richmond. North, or Narf, as students called it in the early 2000s, was a sketchy, scrappy neighborhood. Central was a bit more refined. New York Yankees represented Narf. Residents of Central Richmond “claimed” their allegiance by wearing a Cincinnati hat, and sometimes Colorado Rockies (CR, Central Richmond, get it?) Then there was San Pablo, represented by a Pittsburgh Pirates hat, and I truthfully do not remember where they figured in with all of this.
Hats were not allowed at school in 2004 and most teachers enforced the rule. In the later years, pushback against the rule grew more pronounced. Younger teachers from the Teach For America program were more accustomed to men wearing ball caps, and the rule began to be ignored. Boys began showing up in NY hats, and C hats, and the occasional LA hat. It wasn’t my job to learn the nuances of hats and gang affiliation, but as teachers we were asked to enforce the No Hats policy. In some instances, people in the region had been murdered, shot in the face, for wearing the wrong color or hat. The police department had informed District officials of the importance of not allowing students to wear hats.
For a time – perhaps five years or so - site supervisors would continually harp on students to not wear hats, and would in many cases confiscate hats. The front office had dozens and dozens of hats, and at the end of some of the school years, boys flocked to the counter to claim their hats back. It was a ridiculous battle, in a way. Teachers who perhaps didn’t feel the attachment to the students seemed disinterested in enforcing the hat rules. Or maybe it was the desire to be the “cool teacher.”
As the years passed, the Administration changed attitudes, and began returning hats - immediately after school, in some cases. I was a bit surprised at this. If the hat invited challenges, what good was it to take the hats from students at school, but allow them to wear their hats while walking or driving home?
It got even weirder. One boy told me he had a note from his doctor saying that he had a medical condition requiring him to wear a hat. I was skeptical, but an assistant principal at the time told me that, yes indeed, the student had a medical need. After a few weeks, I asked to see the note. Paraphrasing here, the note read, “[Students name] had a surgery on his eye and it is still boddering him.” And the note was signed, “Dr. [last name]”.
I kept the note, and visited Mr. Corman, the AP who had first been shown the note.
“Read this, Carey.”
Silence.
“Oh, I see…hmm. I guess I should have looked at this more closely.”
This was typical of administrators; too overloaded with tasks heaped upon them to, in some cases, do their job perfectly. Sure, no one is perfect, but Carey was a close to perfect as they come, in my estimation. Still, this guy, with his eye “boddering him” had slipped through.
I had grown so accustomed to the No Hats policy that I found myself reacting when I would see men in a restaurant wearing ball-caps. Then I retired.
BUT!
Here in Truckee I substitute teach are Truckee High. The students are allowed to wear hats, and they DO, with gusto. I have a hunch that the gang-banger association is far less intense at Truckee High. Then there are the girls who wear hats associated with ranching, a déjà vu to my college days. Whereas a NY or C or LA hat would be only worn in pristine condition, with the sticker on the bill, the girls rancher hats – Carhartt, John Deere, and other cattle-themed logos – are worn along with boot-cut jeans, and work boots. It’s a great look, I must say.
Perhaps the funniest hat usage is the back-to-front style, in which the bill is reversed like a catcher on a baseball team. Having played catcher on my little-league baseball team, I know the reason. The catcher’s mask interfered with the bill. Likewise for the home-plate umpire. Sniper’s also need to wear their hat backwards, to the bill doesn’t bump into the ocular lens. Other than those instances, wearing a hat backwards is a statement; one I don’t want to make.