Hoodies in summer

TheGFG
Sun, 03 Jun 2012 14:17:48 +0000

There are clothing styles designed to look menacing, no matter who wears them. But yes, I specified that the student I had just seen was African-American because Martin was black too and the accusation has been made that, unfortunately, his race played into the perception of him looking threatening with the hood up. So no parent can claim ignorance s/he didn’t realize people could misjudge their own kid for wearing his hood up. I mean safety, but mostly in the sense of protecting your kid from being wrongly judged, which could lead to being falsely accused if at the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. Beyond racism, it’s also a practical matter–it is going to be harder to see facial expressions on a dark-skinned person whose face is shadowed, and people rely on facial expressions to discern friendliness and intent.