I think the clothing is a point, however. It ties into a racial perception that's more easily identified at a distance. For example, compare the top right photo (white sweatshirt standing on the hood of the car) with the second row left photo (red sweatshirt by the driver's side mirror). At that distance (and with these size photos), it's hard to distinguish skin tone. But the "preppier" style of the white kids is easier to distinguish from the "baggier" style of the black kids.

As we're bombarded by media imagery of "gangbangers in the 'hood" in loose clothing, we associate that style with a racial construction of crime. The perception of "black clothing" is part and parcel of the perception of "white clothing" in the preppier styles (preppy itself being as much a racial construct from the other direction).

Swapping the clothing, as your students suggested, would very likely have changed the results I think, if only because it would have created a "false" racial perception at a distance. The "preppy black kids" would have adopted a white racial construct, while the "baggy white kids" would have adopted a black racial construct. I don't think that's "extreme resistance to the obvious," but a recognition of racial construction in clothing as you point out in the post.

Granted, I think your student calling it "gang clothing" is itself an example of this racial perception, though the student may or may not have realized it.

I think it should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of self-awareness, honesty, and cultural knowledge that even if the clothing were highly relevant to the case at hand (which is itself not obvious), it is still being used in this case as a racial signifier.

The reference to gangs falls down similarly. One way to experimentally test this would be to present subjects with images or videos of either black or white youth of similar size wearing the same clothing and ask a variety of questions probing the subjects' assumptions about the youth. My guess is that assumptions of gang membership would significantly correlate with race.

Of course, your apologist students would no doubt claim that gang membership falls overwhelmingly along racial lines (I can't say one way or the other, though my feeling is that media representations I've seen very much want me to go along with this claim). That is of course a red herring, since in the absence of concrete, known signifiers of gang membership I could no more conclude anything about gang membership than step club membership (or any other activity that largely falls along racial lines).

It's both. If the two groups switched clothing, I'd be shocked if there weren't more calls than before on the White kids and fewer calls than before on the Black kids. I'm not going to pretend to know which group would have more calls. If they were wearing the exact same clothing, then I'd have to imagine there would still be more calls on the Black kids.

But clearly the way one dresses (and talks, walks, etc.) affects they way in which they're perceived. Think of it on the extremes: far fewer people are threatened by Barack Obama in a suit speaking eloquently than would be threatened by a stereotypical gang-banger wearing baggy clothes, speaking in Ebonics, etc. And you could imagine the same scenario for Whites.

My guess is that it's similar to the achievement gap in education -- Black kids from upper-middle class families are outscored by White kids from upper-middle class families -- but also outscore White kids from lower class families.

So, yes, I think your kids have a valid point. If you were going to conduct an experiment to find out if people were more likely to phone in crimes on Blacks, you would probably want the kids to dress exactly the same. At the same time, I think you're right to argue that the clothing does not explain the entire difference.

I don't think clothing makes a difference because the kids asleep in the car didn't look like they were wearing baggy clothes to me.

it isn;t scientific rigor. you would need people wearing the EXACT same cloths and then two groups wearing a different set of cloths. and I'm sure baggier clothes are perceived as more black (as stated in Gomi's comment)

but kids sleeping! kids. asleep, are more of a threat than active vandals. point made.

I think the baggy clothing = gang clothes has more to do with the ability to hide weapons than race. Some years ago, I worked night shift at a gas station/convenience store/car dealership - the only place open 24 hrs in the middle of nowhere, and last stop for fuel for people traveling to the reserves up north. A guy with several teen boys stopped by and I noted one of the boys behaving suspiciously before dashing out the door. My original thought was that he'd shoplifted a choclate bar or something. Looking at the security cameras, I could see him slinking (literally) around the building before going out of camera view. Unable to leave the store, I told my co-worker what I saw and asked him to go check. He went around the building and eventually saw the boy tampering with one of the ATVs at the dealership. At that point, we had to call the RCMP (company rules: if we saw anyone in the dealership at night, we were to call the police). While on the phone, one of the first things the dispatcher asked me was if they were wearing loose clothing that could conceal a weapon. I had to say yes, though I also made sure to say I didn't think they had any weapons.

Later, when I had to turn the phone over to my co-worker, I was horrified at how he described the boys as being native. Clearly he'd been asked for a physical description. It was as if he couldn't see any physical characteristics beyond their skin colour/ethnicity, and I immediately knew he'd escalated the situation in just a few words. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to talk to the dispatcher again to clarify anything.

Still, when the officer arrived, he did so with his gun drawn. Because of their baggy clothes, I was unable to say with certainty that they did *not* have hidden weapons, no matter how convinced I was that they didn't. In the end, the RCMP officer couldn't take the chance. It irritates me that race became part of the issue at all, as it was totally irrelevant to the situation. It turned out to just be a group of teens heading home with their foster dad. One of them had a stupid moment, causing some slight damage to the ATV he'd tampered with. Would things have gone differently if they'd be wearing more form fitting clothing? Under the circumstances, I think so.

I wonder if the white kids had worn punk or goth clothes (longer black or dyed hair, skinny jeans, t shirts with metal bands or skateboard companies, maybe eyeliner) what would have happened.

I've been thinking about something similar recently because here in Louisiana a legislator is once again pushing a bill that would ban sagging pants. Now, I have a pair of jeans that seemed to fit in the store but have turned out to be a bit too big for me, and I constantly have to pull them up (yeah, I need to get a belt). I'm also short so they pool around my ankles a bit. BUT I'm a white 29-year-old female and I know that even if the bill passes, I'm sure as hell not the one who will be targeted for fines--young black males in basically the same attire are.

finette:
There is a legislator who wants to give Louisiana a high school dress code? That's absurd!!

Please don't take these ridiculous ABC "What Would You Do" shows as indications of anything. The producers of these shows go in with a thesis that they think is controversal and then try to film any evidence that it is. Then they can promo the bits endlessly the week of broadcast with sensational, breathless voiceovers of "You won't believe what we found!"

They pulled one of these things in Hoboken where I live. They set up a 10 year old child on the sidewalk and had him do sad eyes at the people walking by to see if anyone would stop to help him. They were pretending he was an abandoned child, and that's how it looked on TV. I walked by him not knowing about the experiment and didn't really take notice. He looked like any other kid on a lightly trafficked urban sidewalk waiting for his mom to come out of the hardware store. A block up the street the show producers were asking people if they had noticed the kid. I hadn't really. Definitely didn't think he was abandoned.

Eventually they escalated the drama and got the kid to start crying. A few women stopped to help and BINGO they had a show. Women cared about the abandoned kid in this "busy urban street" while men took no notice. Aren't men horrible!

It ain't sociology; it's hyped up Candid Camera pretending to have a social conscience.

"The White kids’ shirts have words on them which I assume are school names..."

Why?

I have watched the show a while ago and it just goes to show that white kids doing something like that are seen as rowdy teens having fun or messing around and black kids doing the exact same thing are sen ad savage criminals. I mean those kids sleeping were seen as a threat, and they were sleeping!

Now as for the clothing I think that is a cop out, "gang clothing" really? Even if they had been wearing the same thing the black kids still would have been gained more police calls. Like the whole "shopping while black" thing even if I was dressed a certain way I have been followed to make sure I wouldn't shoplift. I am taking about jeans a hoodie with no pockets.

I don't often hear about a group of young white men getting labeled a "gang" by passersby, no matter what they're wearing. The one exception would be skinheads in Europe. On the other hand, a group of young black males in America instantly seems to trigger that response in a lot of people, including many of my own friends (I'm also a young black male, which makes it even more depressing).

What do the blogger's students know about gangs or their clothing? Very little, I'd say - gangs in the places I grew up in didn't dress differently from anyone else. But the sight of a black man in a prominent bright color - especially red - never fails to make a lot of people conclude that he's in a gang.

When I was in 7th grade, I was ordered under my school's vague dress policy to stop wearing a red sweatshirt because it was "gang colors," then sent back to the office later that week when I showed up in a blue shirt. Absolutely no one would've taken me for a Blood or a Crip (neither of which had much presence in our neighborhood anyway), and kids of other ethnicities weren't being singled out, but the pop-culture stereotypes ran so deep at the time that it was impossible for the school's supposedly well-meaning authorities to simply see a straight-A student in the clothes his mom picked out.

Be it noted that what follows should be oh so surpassingly apparent to even the most unlearned and vacuous knave!

I address Charles...

Thou Sir, art pretentious!

Sure, the clothing could be making a difference... AS an indicator of race and/or class!

Really, I think the clothing is much more a symbol of white students attempting to explain it away as "its not about race." "It is not that they are black, it is that they are wearing baggy clothing! And they look like they are in a gang! Neither of those things are because they are black."

(I see the same thing when talking about gender differences.)

Part of the attempt to appear "colorblind" is that whites tend to blame everything else but race. We try to deny that racism still exists, and as such, we try to blame everything else but race.

I think in this case the clothes are too similar for their reversal to lead to any tangible changes in the experiment's outcome.

However, I do believe that when such differences are significant, they do have the power to override racial prejudices. Prejudice is not the result of just race: it comes from stereotyping, assumptions and cultural differences.

Let's say you give participants a photo of a dark street with a man walking on each side. The one on the left is black, the one on the right is white. Ask participants which side of the street they would rather walk - you'll probably get some racism effects. Now put the black guy in a business suit and the white guy in baggy jeans and a loose hoodie. I'm willing to bet the trend would reverse. In this case it would not be a consequence of racism, but the stereotype associated with dress code and belonging to a particular social group.

"Do you think it’s the do-rag and not the skin color that matters here?"

Unfortunately, I think that what matters here (both in the ABC piece and the description of the class presentation and discussion) is that race is being considered without enough context. What kind of neighborhood was this exercise performed in? How visible, if at all, was the production crew? What kinds of behavioral, bodily, and linguistic cues did passersby use to make judgements? How did the passersby weigh class, threat level, and the social impact of their own reactions against the "vandals'" identities and activities, and how did this influence their decision making processes?

Wikipedia states that less than 2% of Ridgewood's population is African American, and that nearly 90% of the population is European American. Additionally, the average household income level is nearly 125K. If I were to make any assumptions, I think it would be that the presence of any so-called black person who is present in Ridgewood's public space and is not either visibly wealthy, or actually at work within the community, is already an exceptional case. In short, Ridgewood is both a socially and spatially segregated community-a specific kind of space where blackness obviously stands out. To not include this in a discussion as to why there would be more "outrage" and concern about black kids vandalizing a car is surprising and disappointing. Once the spatial framework of who spends time in Ridgewood, and what their expected behavior would be is laid out, then it might be possible to analyze the ABC piece.

Then we are left with the question of the actors. Why are the black kids smaller and younger? Why do they spend more time with their hoods up? Why are they wearing clothes that make them stand out even more in Ridgewood, New Jersey? In short, why didn't the class spend more time analyzing the program in terms of the problems inherent in the production process? Shouldn't students learn about how media shapes perceptions of difference (even purportedly well intentioned productions)? For my money, it is sad to think that a piece like this would pass as a newsflash. Any sane darker skinned minority kid would not need to watch a show like this in order to determine that their presence is suspect in a place like Ridgewood. Its not the do-rag, or the skin color. It is the location. The location permits (to some degree) white juvenile delinquency, which could possibly relate to class entitlement, among many other things. But it has no room for black juvenile delinquency. Note the make, model and condition of the car. Is it representative of what one would see driven by somebody living in Ridgewood? Is it a "nice" car? Is it possible that it is the sort of material object that (wealthier) white kids in Ridgewood might feel entitled to abuse as a prank? That their parents can afford to repair? Would a more expensive car have warranted a different response? Conversely, can black kids "afford" to abuse a car when they are more likely economically less wealthy? Are they more likely to escalate their criminal behavior? Shouldn't it be assumed that if they are brazen enough to vandalize a car in Ridgewood (where they are likely out of place), that they might be willing to do more? Or is it only their clothing and race that can be read here?

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