Wolfchase should ditch its ‘no hoodie’ policy

The security guards must have taken Veterans Day off at Wolfchase Galleria. Because on that day, the hoodie-wearers were out in force.

Girls donning hoodies emblazoned with Victoria Secrets’ Pink logo peered through store windows and shopped at smartphone accessory kiosks. Guys, some teenage, some older, sported hoodies as they laughed and chatted on mall benches and food court tables.

And 14-year-old Terry Bailey, who waited for two of his friends who were shopping, wore his hoodie with the hood up and all.

“I like my hoodie,” Terry said. “I don’t see why I can’t wear it if I’m not doing anything wrong.”

Yet recently, the simple act of wearing that piece of apparel — a piece of clothing worn by everyone from CEOs to sports teams and was advertised in every other store window in the galleria — led to arrests.

Apparently, after an older white security guard followed a group of African-American males at the mall, the men were asked to remove their hoodies. They refused and were escorted out. Incensed over being singled out for what they were wearing, they returned and were arrested for trespassing.

The officers then arrested Kevin McKenzie, a former Commercial Appeal reporter, for questioning the arrest and filming it with his cell phone — something they said violated the mall’s policy of recording videos for commercial use. When McKenzie wouldn’t stop, they arrested him for criminal trespass.

But on Veteran’s Day, it was glaringly obvious that many of the mall’s visitors hadn’t gotten the memo about hoodies being forbidden. Perhaps that was because the mall’s code of conduct only states that visitors are to wear “appropriate clothing.”

Hard to imagine a hoodie being inappropriate.

And the fact that wearing one got an African-American man arrested as scores of other shoppers had no qualms about wearing theirs speaks more to racial profiling than to actual safety concern. It also speaks to racial tone-deafness from Wolfchase Galleria management.

So far, the mall, which is managed by Simon Property Group, has stood by its actions. In a statement, it said it requires “customers to not conceal their identity while on mall property as a matter of public safety.” Yet McKenzie’s video of the arrests — which don’t capture what might have happened beforehand — show the men wearing their hoodies down.

Nonetheless, few, if any, studies have linked hoodie-wearing to increases in mall crimes. Hoodie-stereotyping, in fact, has led to the slaying of a black teenager.

In 2012, George Zimmerman, a selfappointed neighborhood watchman, stalked and ultimately fatally shot 17year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, as he walked home from a convenience store at night. One of the things that made Trayvon suspicious to Zimmerman was the fact that he was wearing a hoodie.

Trayvon’s death by stereotype, and the movement that followed, sought to remove stigmas surrounding the hoodie; a piece of apparel worn by people ranging from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to high school kids wearing them with their team’s mascot.

Trayvon’s slaying, in fact, inspired a “Million Hoodies March” in New York City that year, as well as countless posts on Twitter and Facebook in which people donned hoodies in their profile pictures to show solidarity with Trayvon.

Apparently, Simon Property Group missed all that.

Yet judging from all the hoodie-wearing people at the mall recently by people who apparently aren’t fearful of being stopped by security, it seems as if the rule is selectively enforced — and that leaves room for mall security and police to make up specifics as they go along.

That atmosphere makes young black men such as James Kilpatrick, 23, feel vulnerable.

“Yes, I definitely feel targeted, because people will look at me sideways because I have a hoodie on when I’m here to shop like everyone else,” he said. “I feel as a black man, we should be able to wear what we want. We shouldn’t be targeted because we’re wearing hoodies.”

Kierra Smith, 21, said she thought the mall’s policy was unfair.

“I feel like if they aren’t doing anything suspicious, then just let them be,” she said.

The mall should rethink its policy. Because right now, it has the effect of forcing black teenagers to adhere to double-standards to accommodate unreasonable fears about them.

It’s a policy that adds to the stresses of black life; of being targeted for simply living your life in the same way that countless other folks do.

And trying not to wind up in jail or dead for doing so.