Word: blacking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...greatest hit, 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, was his high point - black and scary, but featuring a cannibal so smart and sardonic that you had no problem imagining Jodie Foster sort of falling for him - or at least having a wary dinner with him. This was Demme in from the fringe, operating in the mainstream - and about to lose his way with the ponderous, if well-meant, AIDS drama, Philadelphia. After that it has all been pomp and boredom - Beloved, The Manchurian Candidate, a documentary about Jimmy Carter, for heaven's sake...
...ordinance earlier this year declaring it "unlawful for any person to appear in public or in view of the public wearing pants below the waist which expose the skin or undergarments." The offending style, of course, was the hip-hop-influenced saggy-pants fashion, popular primarily among young black men who let their pants drop and expose a few inches of their boxer shorts. But the city fathers of Riviera Beach could have a hard time convincing the local judiciary that the ordinance is constitutionally valid...
...Twenty miles (32 km) outside city limits at the Boynton Beach Mall, 17-year-old Jay Johnson lets his black shirt drape over dropped shorts. "My dad and my mom don't like it," he says. "You gotta listen to your parents. And I know it's hard to find a job with your pants down low, so you fix them." Some who are against the fashion argue there is no need for a fashion police, despite sagging's association with gangsta...
...crackdown on sagging not only has strained relations between young black men and law enforcement but it could also have a significant economic impact on inner-city residents struggling financially, says Tricia Rose, a professor at Brown University's Department of Africana Studies and the author of the forthcoming book The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop - And Why It Matters. The average median household income in Riviera Beach is about $10,000 lower than that in the rest of the country, and the city's per capita violent-crime rate is higher...
...Rose sees a class dimension to the crackdown; most cities that have pondered or passed saggy-pants laws are led by black politicians. "A lot of this is [about] class and the anxiety that this young black population ... is going to stigmatize the black middle class," Rose argues. And, she adds, young people will continue to adopt dress codes that get a rise out of adults and that reflect class alienation...