Unjustified fears don’t warrant a blanket ban on expression

Havelock must be a hotbed for gang activity. Craven County should have a higher per-capita thug population than the most violent of inner-city slums.

Just look at how everyone’s dressed.

Equating urban fashion with gangs is absurd, but that’s the preposterous presumption our county school board made when its members voted to ban baggy pants and long shirts in 2005. The student handbook’s dress code calls the large threads “gang-related.”

Some gang members do wear overlarge T-shirts and sagging jeans, but so do professional athletes, hip-hop artists, singers, comedians and actors.

When the fashion is trumpeted in magazines and paraded on television, it’s careless to assume children and teens are modeling their dress after the least-common denominator.

I have a simple syllogism for our school board: If long shirts and baggy pants are really gang-related, then street gangs must rely on the clothing to identify their members and rivals, right?

Wrong. Not just missed-the-extra-credit wrong, but completely, colossally, dead wrong. Flunked-it-on-purpose, class clown wrong. Detention wrong.

Gang members wear distinctive clothing such as solid-color baseball caps and bandanas to advertise their loyalties and immediately spot both co-conspirators and members of rival gangs.

Because baggy pants and long shirts are so ubiquitous, they have become useless to gangs looking to make their mark. Millions of people nationwide are sporting sagging trousers, and school officials expect us to believe the Bloods and Crips are scanning crowds for billowing pant legs?

That’s a dubious and irresponsible assumption that has no basis in reality. It doesn’t pass the smell test.

A more likely explanation for the ban is that teachers and Board of Education members think a surly, slump-shouldered teenager with a 3XL shirt and jeans four sizes too big looks sinister — more menacing than the same student in a nice pastel polo shirt and creased khakis.

That’s more reflexive of outmoded prejudices than reasonable anti-gang precautions.

Children and teens express themselves through their choice of clothing. Maybe baggy jeans aren’t quite as enduring a symbol of free speech as the black armbands students wore to protest fighting in Vietnam, but all personal expression is significant, whether or not it’s substantive.

But, school officials argue, why not forbid the long tees and pants to prevent the possibility — no matter how likely or unlikely — of some incidental association with a street gang or with gang wannabes?

Because improbable, unjustified and nebulous fears do not warrant a blanket ban on expression.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to the Supreme Court. In his majority opinion for the high court’s 1969 decision in the black armband case — Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District — Justice Abe Fortas explained it far better than I could.

“(I)n our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression,” he wrote. “Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk… .”

The Craven County Board of Education ought to roll back its shortsighted ban on baggy clothing. I challenge county students and parents to let their school board members know where they stand.

Don’t sag your pants in defiance of the dress code, but if you’re looking for a meaningful, symbolic and already court-approved way to protest, I hear they still make those black armbands.

Corey Friedman is the Havelock News’ staff writer and photographer.