Wow, what is the National Basketball Association (NBA) thinking? They’ve implemented a new dress code where, essentially, hip hop clothing is prohibited. The dress code, strict by Catholic School standards, requires that all players be dressed appropriately while conducting NBA business. And by “appropriate,” the NBA means no logos, no sneakers, no t-shirts, basically come to work like you work for a Wall Street broker. According to espn.com, NBA Commissioner David Stern stated at a press conference on Tuesday October 18, 2005 that, “If they are really going to have a problem, they will have to make a decision about how they want to spend their adult life in terms of playing in the NBA or not.”
Maybe David Stern needs to get off of his high horse and stop creating culturally biased rules in the NBA. Yes, I said culture. Hip Hop is a culture that stretches beyond the NBA and beyond the music. Would the NBA be doing this if the league was not dominated by minorities? Would the league impose restrictions on dress code if everyone wore Abercrombie & Fitch instead of G-Unit?
If David Stern and the rest of the suits controlling the NBA think that the dress changes the man, they’re crazy. This dress code just shows how the wealthy and affluent of America try to use their leverage (money and power) to try to impose their ways on the masses.
“Just because you put a guy in a tuxedo, it doesn’t mean he’s a good guy.”
This statement is true. When a person is put in a legal or criminal trial, guilty or not, they arrive to court in a suit. The suit tries to show them as being innocent, but hell, they could’ve eaten 27 people and drove around the country wearing somebody’s skin as a hat, for all the jury knows. The NBA believes that by changing the clothes, they’re changing the man. I’m not saying these athletes are bad guys because most of them aren’t; I’m just saying a guy will be a problem with or without a suit on. Just like when you tell someone not to do something, if a guy is a problem he’ll do it.
Flashy clothing, gaudy jewelry, cars with big rims, and whatever the majority wants to associate with Hip Hop culture, all share one thing in common. They all strike up controversy; they all scare the hell out of the suits in Washington, the suits in Corporate America, and now the NBA. When is the cultural profiling going to end? Just because a guy listens to 50 Cent or listens to Kanye West doesn’t make him a bad person. It means they have good taste in music. Enuff Said.