14d • General discussion
Dressing Up Is Not Dressing White
Let's chat about the idea that Black insistence on dressing up is respectability politics — a performance for white approval. Here's my argument: to call dressing up "dressing white," you first have to agree that dressing up belongs to white people. That's a deed transfer, not liberation. And HBCU formal tradition is older than most of the corporate dress codes people are mad at.
The freedom to be casual at work isn't a style permission, it's a downstream effect of ownership. Carefree is what safety looks like when you wear it. 👉🏾 https://open.substack.com/pub/askardenia/p/dressing-up-is-not-dressing-white?r=4eitmy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Here's the one I want us to sit with, and it applies whether you're Black or not:
Think of the most casually dressed person in your workplace. Now ask yourself honestly — what makes them able to get away with it? Seniority? Tenure? Whose kid they are? How hard they'd be to replace?
Then ask who in your building would get read as "unprofessional" for wearing the exact same thing.
Same clothes, different verdict. What's the actual variable?
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Dressing Up Is Not Dressing White
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