It was a fashion that offended those with delicate sensibilities, and even caused former US president Barack Obama to wade in.
“Brothers should pull up their pants,” Obama once said of sagging — the practice of wearing trousers so low around the waist that most of the underwear is exposed.
Now a US city that made headlines by passing an ordinance against the trend in 2007, imposing a fine of up to US$500 on anybody caught low-riding within its boundaries, appears to no longer be outraged.
Photo: AP
In a 4-1 vote, commissioners in Opa-locka, Florida, acted to strike the original regulation, and a 2013 amendment extending the ban to women, from its statute book.
Officials in the majority black city said that the move was meant to increase equality.
“I was never in support of it, even as a resident,” vice-mayor Chris Davis, one of five city commissioners who are all black, told the Miami Herald. “I felt it disproportionately affected a certain segment of our population, which is young, African American men.”
Sagging, which has its roots in New York hip-hop culture of the early 1990s, spread around the country into the early 2000s. School districts passed rules against it, the Louisiana town of Delcambre branded it indecent exposure and in Dallas, Texas, officials went so far as to launch an anti-sagging billboard campaign.
In 2011, Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of the band Green Day, was thrown off a flight from Oakland to Burbank when attendants deemed his trousers were hanging too low.
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the push for regulation, denouncing the original Opa-locka ordinance as “a ridiculous waste of public resources” — a position the city’s leaders have come to embrace.
At a meeting last week it was decided that tighter budgets in the COVID-19 era, married with a lack of enthusiasm to enforce the ordinance, meant it was time for it to go.
“What better climate to do it in than the one that’s going on around the country centered on police reform, and just looking at ways that we can make our public services more equitable,” Davis told the Herald.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese