Can A Dress Code Be Racist?

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On Tuesday the Twin Cities’ CityPages published an article asking whether a local bar’s dress code was racist:

The dress code prohibits entry to those wearing flat-brim hats, sleeveless undershirts, excessively baggy clothing, large chains worn outside the shirt, athletic apparel, sports jerseys without collars, and long white t-shirts from 9 p.m. to close, Thursdays through Sundays.

Almost immediately afterward, CityPages answered its own question with the article “Yes, Bar Louie’s dress code is racist.” Well, it’s good that they’ve made that clear.

“You might as well say, ‘No black folks allowed,’” Minneapolis white lady Michelle Horovitz told Fox 9, adding that the dress code is the “new Jim Crow being enforced in a colorblind way.”

Frankly, I find the allegation that this dress code is racist to be unapologetically racist. Aren’t these people enlightened? Don’t they know that people of all ethnicities can dress like douchebags?

I can’t picture a waiter at Bar Louie enforcing this. Like pretty much anyone who works in Uptown, they’re skinny white men like myself who probably see a black guy wearing chains and feel a mixture of fear and self-loathing.

Sure, some black men dress the way the dress code deems not fit for Thursdays through Sundays. Some black men have also mugged me. However, because I am sane, I realize that all black men are not muggers, and hence, by the same rule, not all black men are forced to dress like douchebags.

“But wait,” a social-justice blogger begins to type, “while there are exceptions to the rule, it can be generally considered true that black people have a higher tendency to dress the way described in the dress code than white people.”

Yeah? Guess what? They also have more of a tendency than whites or Asians to shoot people. That’s not racism, that’s fact. If facts are racist and you care more about people’s feelings than truth, fine, but the fact is, no, Bar Louie’s dress code isn’t that worst-of-all-sin of racism. Those calling it “racist” are the racists because they see race in everything.