Policing gangsta fashion

Are "anti-gang" dress codes in malls a way to deter crime, or just another way to prosecute patrons for shopping while black?

By Amy Benfer

May 29, 2002 | In late April, the rap star Nelly entered the Union Station Mall in his hometown of St. Louis to purchase 20 Cardinals jerseys for a video he was shooting at Busch stadium. Nelly (given name, Cornelius Haynes Jr.) is a local celebrity whose presence is usually welcomed. But on this day he was asked to leave by the Union Station security staff. The reason? He was wearing a do-rag, which is explicitly prohibited under the Union Station dress code as an item of "commonly known gang-related paraphernalia" -- a category the mall defines as "including, but not limited to: wearing or showing a bandana or do rag of any color, a hat tilted or turned to the side, a single sleeve or pant leg pulled/rolled up and flashing gang signs."

It's hard to believe that a rapper whose Grammy-winning "Country Grammar" album sold more than 8 million copies and put St. Louis on the hip-hop map would head down to Union Station Mall to engage in "gang-related" activity. But in this mall, as in many others across America, one doesn't have to be a gang member to be evicted under anti-gang ordinances; one merely has to dress in a way that makes one look like a gang member, as defined by the mall in question.

The mall, insist mall operators, is private property, and as such, its owners can make any rules they like without consideration of their patrons' constitutional right to free speech. Dress codes, which they claim are based on profiles of gang paraphernalia provided by local police departments and the FBI, are created, they say, as safety measures, not, as one critic of the Union Station Mall insists, as a thinly disguised method of "ethnic cleansing."

A familiar question arises: Do clothes make the man? In this case, a legal query follows: Do clothes make the man dangerous? After decades in which so-called gangster fashion has borrowed from and infused the mainstream, we have entered an age in which kids imitate hip-hop stars imitating gangsters who often imitate gangsta rappers (who may or may not have anything to do with real gangsters). At this point, it is nearly impossible to say whether a particular item of apparel signifies anything at all. "Gang-related" clothing can look very much like clothing favored by African-American youth and the kids of all races who have picked up on the popularity of hip-hop fashion. It also can be the clothes of a someone ready to pick a fight at the mall.

So when is a fashion victim a security risk? The mall owners say that on their turf, they get to decide. But a growing number of complaints and lawsuits have been filed -- by activist groups, the ACLU and individuals -- that challenge the claim that malls are private. Even if a mall is considered private, with the same rights as entities like stores and restaurants, its owners cannot enforce rules that result in racial discrimination.

But the battle is not only legal, it is cultural as well: Even if a mall defends itself legally against a lawsuit, being publicly accused of racism can be a public relations disaster, not to mention economic suicide for a retail outlet whose profits depend on the goodwill of its community. Yet a mall can expect a similar dive in revenue if patrons are too afraid of potential violence to shop there.

In St. Louis, on the day after Nelly was asked to leave Union Station Mall, the local chapter of the National Action Network (NAN), an African-American activist network whose national chairman is the Rev. Al Sharpton, issued a "travel advisory" warning black shoppers to stay away from Union Station. The group has staged two protests so far -- the first on May 7, followed by a second on May 20 -- led by the Rev. Horace Sheffield III of the Michigan NAN, and Lizz Brown, a local radio personality. About 150 people, many wearing bandanas and do-rags, marched through the mall to protest the so-called anti-gang dress code, which they claim is really an "anti-black" dress code designed to keep African-Americans out of the mall.

And on the day of the first protest, Brown, later quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, explicitly equated the dress code with pre-civil rights racial segregation: "Years ago this station had a sign outside that said, Whites Only," she said. "They took down the sign, but they continued the policy."

Next Page: Even private entities can't discriminate on the basis of race

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