Down and out in Ghetto-Fabulous style

The term "ghetto-fabulous" refers to people and things that are trendy in an ostentatiously black, urban style. Hip kids of all stripes admire and emulate the ghetto-fabulous style of rap artists and inner-city youth. Ghetto-fabulous also is a term that black people apply, affectionately or derisively, to people whose expensive clothes or car belies the fact that there are few actual Benjamins (cash) to back up the look.

As wonderful as ghetto-fabulous style can be, there are a number of negative ghetto-fabulous moves that serve mostly to keep us down and out, and out of college:

·Gold teeth: It's tempting to just leave it at, "'Nuff said," but I need to get this off my chest: Any dentist who would put gold veneer over a young person's front teeth ought to have his or her license revoked for malpractice. A black dentist once took offense because I questioned the professional ethics of installing gold grillwork in a young patient's mouth. He insisted that his colleagues were participating in a rich cultural practice. Oh, so that's what you call severely limiting young black men and women's job prospects.

Letitia Plummer is a black Houston dentist who has donated many hours and thousands of dollars in free dental work to Career Smiles, the foundation she launched to remove gold caps from the front teeth of young people who commit to an education or job training plan. Plummer says not to blame only dentists for the caps, because there are plenty of guys from the neighborhood who run "shade tree" tooth-grinding and gold-plating shops. That takes the ghetto-fabulous cake.

·Counting on a pro sports or entertainment career as the ticket to success: Black people have excelled in every imaginable field despite the tremendous hurdles of slavery, segregation and racism. The names of black men and women are listed among the world's greatest in medicine, literature, theater, opera, dance, music, sports, law and business. The range of potential ability and talent in black kids clearly is as broad and deep as in any other group. And yet, too many black kids pin their future and concentrate their efforts on the infinitesimal chance of finding stardom in the NBA or NFL or in rapping on BET.

We must do more as a community to show black children a fuller, more realistic range of career choices.

·Letting our children watch too much television: According to any number of respectable studies, too many black children watch too much television, up to six hours every day in front of the tube. No wonder so many kids are brain-dead in class. No wonder so many children are prone to obesity from inactivity, mindless snacking and endless exposure to junk food advertising. No wonder they are failing school and scoring poorly on standardized tests.

·Lack of discipline at school: Many teachers, including black teachers, have written to me complaining of disruptive black students and parents who blame the school when their children get into trouble. On the other hand, research shows black students are more likely than whites to be suspended or expelled for similar disciplinary infractions. I believe there is truth on both sides. No doubt, different tales emerge depending on whether a black student attends a "black school" or a "white school."

Regardless, we must ensure that our children treat school as a serious enterprise and are well-mannered and respectful of teachers and each other.

·Preferring to "keep it real," rather than study: There is little more self-defeating than some black students' attitude that to do well in school is to "act white." Where did these young people get the asinine notion that to be ignorant is to "act black"?

·Protesting the firing of black teachers, principals and school administrators no matter how incompetent: Sometimes people do unjust things to black people because of their conscious or unconscious biases. But sometimes people just want to get rid of unqualified educators, which we ought to support whole-heartedly.

·Not voting: To be black and not vote consistently is an affront to all of the black people who so recently in U.S. history were unlawfully disenfranchised, insulted, beaten, maimed and killed because they asserted their constitutional right to cast a ballot. If we all voted, we wouldn't have to worry about our elected officials, white, black or other, making their own ghetto-fabulous moves to keep us down and out.

Georgsson, an editorial writer, is a member of the Chronicle Editorial Board. (andrea.georgsson@chron.com)

Ghetto-fabulous also is a term that black people apply, affectionately or derisively, to people whose expensive clothes or car belies the fact that there are few actual Benjamins (cash) to back up the look.

As You Can See From My Name-Brand Clothing, I Am Not Poor

The Onion


By Manny Lucas

Just because I happen to live with my four brothers and sisters in my mom's two-bedroom South Side apartment, work at Taco Bell, and don't have a car, some ignorant types assume that I don't have much money. But, as you can clearly see from my $220 Fubu jacket and $95 Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt, I could not possibly be poor.

The kind of name-brand clothing I wear is very expensive. See these Karl Kani jeans? Eighty-eight dollars. Would I spend that kind of money on a pair of jeans if I were poor? Of course not. If I were poor, I'd think $88 was way too much to spend on a pair of jeans that, with the exception of a tiny Karl Kani logo embroidered on the front right pocket, are practically indistinguishable from a plain old pair of $25 Levi's. But I don't think that's too much to spend because, for a well-off person like myself, money is no object.

Sure, I make $5.90 an hour at Taco Bell, but that couldn't possibly be my only source of income, could it? If my total weekly take-home pay were only $175, why in the world would I spend practically that much on a Nautica sweater and pair of Timberlands? That would mean I'd have spent 40 hours slinging Chalupas just for that one shopping trip to the mall. That'd just be plain stupid. So, obviously, I must be rolling in dough. And I am. You can tell by my special non-poor-people clothing.

Yes, it's obvious that I'm not like all those other losers who are working at Taco Bell and living with their moms. No, I'm a player. Take, for example, my socks. If I didn't have money to burn, I certainly wouldn't spend $22 for a pair of basic white athletic socks with a teeny-tiny Calvin Klein "CK" on them, would I? Of course not. I'd need to save my cash to get my telephone reconnected, or to pay off my loitering fine, or to help out my mom with the grocery bill. But, luckily, I'm not in that situation, and everyone knows it just by looking at my clothes.

I'll admit it: A lot of people here on the South Side are poor. In fact, most of my relatives are poor, including my mother and all my siblings. Knowing that, you might assume that I don't have that much money, either. But just look at these Lugz boots. And look at this Sean John baseball cap. They prove that I'm in an entirely different social class from my relatives, as well as from all those suckers who ride the bus with me every day.

Except for Angela, that is. I met her Monday on the C-route. She clearly belongs to a higher class of people like myself. I could tell because she was decked out from head to toe in expensive gear: Fubu jersey, Pepe jeans, and Fila shoes, not to mention a big gold chain around her neck. Angela was holding her two-year-old son, but he obviously isn't placing much of a financial strain on her, as he was wearing a complete matching Abercrombie & Fitch outfit, which must have cost around $140. Recognizing how much Angela and I had in common, I asked her out on the spot. We went to dinner at Denny's that very same night.

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