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I remember the El Debarge era! LOL, but not really laughing because it was ridiculous and so is the current trend of the hypermasculine male being the attractive item right now. In regard to business, I'm not sure that companies bear any social responsibility to anyone outside of their shareholders. I think it's obvious that they should be more responsible. I had a long conversation, one of those ones I promised not to have on Facebook, last week with these guys that said Lebron James should be more socially responsible than advertising McDonald's to his susceptible fans. I thought this was complete hogwash. The guy is a professional athlete with a very limited shelf life. He just happens to be one of the lucky ones with a long career. But to ask the guy to not accept money that builds wealth for his family is rude and foolish. McDonald's doesn't kill people, greed and overeating does. McDonald's has clearly labeled all of their food and they go out of their way now to provide healthier options. To say that Lebron should turn down money because people are getting overweight, is wrong. I say all of that to say that the corparations should assume some responsibility, but why should they? They are created to make money. We are created to make decisions. If our self esteem and decisions are shaped so thoroughly by corporations and media then that's on us. I just came to this realization when I started ARCH. I used to sell at a local flea market. People would bypass my table where they could buy a pair of my shoes that I designed and made to go and buy a pair of fake AF1s or Nikes. I mean people would look like I was trying to sell them cancer when I asked them to come and check out my shoes. The look on their faces was like I had skunk juice in a cup. I eventually gave up on the idea of selling my shoes there and started selling Nikes and Jordans from the Nike Clearance Store. Even when I could verify that my shoes were real, people still walked by me and went to the Africans because they didn't want to buy shoes from me. These are black people not wanting to buy from a black man although I had what they wanted and it was real! I eventually moved all of my business online and my growth has been ridiculous and I know for a fact that the majority of the people buying are not Black. Should Nike make more shoes? No. Their responsibility is to keeping their brand hot and paying their shareholders. We have to do a better job of schooling each other and explaining how we can make real wealth in our communities. Waiting on a corporation to take responsibility is like Danny Glover waiting for a cab in your city Troy. lol.

Clothes have always been indications of status, dating waay back to when which cave man sported the best lookin animal pelt. Clothes, in fact, identify our gender, our nationality and our rank. And our aspirations. In a naked world, we would have to really prove ourselves. When public schools in my district introduced uniforms, requiring students to all dress alike, I was not against this. Made things a lot easier for me as a parent. There is safety in the numbers of sameness. Time enough to be classified by what you wear. Back in my college days during the early 1950s, the preppy look was in. Everybody, both guys and gals had to have a pair of white buckskin oxfords with red rubber soles. Gray flannel pants were an essential to the wardrobes of frat boys, along with navy blue pull overs. For girls, cashmere sweaters were to die for. I can remember rejecting guys who didn't conform to the fashion dictates of the day. The fact that they were usually smart and interesting wasn't a priority for me. I was conflicted by not courageous. My first year at Illinois I lived in the AKA house and clothes definitely mattered among these black female sorors. Once again, my own garb did not adhere to what I approved of in others. I was just never a clothes horse and my outfits were non descript. I did have a pair of white bucks but I never made my way up to a cashmere sweater. As was the case back then, what I lacked for in dress was compensated for by my color. The contempt of the darker girls toward me was thinly-disguised. But the guys always showed great appreciation for my being a "red-bone". In a way, the skin we wear is the ultimate mark of distinction.

We used to call them bo bos and bubbleheads. We even called them zippies, but when I was really young, no one snapped on any one else because there was only one kid in the neighborhood who had enough money to have shoes that weren't talking. Which means that the rubber had separated from the upper, or split so that when you walked your shoes made a slapping sound, lol. I wore some shoes until the sole had a hole that you could put your finger through. This didn't change until I was playing in an area we called the jungle and a rusty nail went through my shoe into my foot. Even then, the shoes I got were Kangaroos which were cool because Walter Payton wore them... Shoes though are and always have been a status symbol in the black community. Just like style has been important. When you have a group of people that are oppressed to the extent that we were, everything becomes who can look the best when we get the chance. But in the past 30 years, sneakers have taken on a completely different beast altogether.This began with, like you said, Puma Clyde/Suedes. B-Boys in particular the Rock Steady Crew was featured in movies like Wild Style and Beat Street and all of sudden sneakers became street status symbols and this was further enhanced by Run DMC and My Adidas. In 1984 though, Nike had been paying players and olympians to wear their shoes but it really wasn't taking off until Carl Lewis did what he did in 84 and Sonny Vaccaro told Nike to sign Michael Jordan. The rest is history. Your link to the shooting is an unfortunate aspect of sneaker culture. So is this which happens every year at Christmas This is an annual thing. This past year I had to put the door back on for a local store after a crowd stormed the store. After you watch this video, this is what is shocking, they aren't limited edition. The demand is just so ridiculous that people feel that it is life or death to get a pair of kicks. I'm a part of this culture and I used to feel kind of bad about how much money I made from selling kicks. Then I realized, that I wasn't taking advantage of anyone who hadn't decided they wanted to be taken advantage of. Get this, I was an educator... I stopped teaching to sell shoes. (That's ridiculous isn't it?) It is until you realize that in the past two years I've been able to take my family on vacations from New Orleans, to Orlando, to San Diego to Nashville, to Washington D.C. and I didn't even wink when I had to pay the bills. When I was an educator, we hadn't gone on vacation in over 10 years because we couldn't afford it. There is so much in this that I could talk about but I will leave you with this for the moment. On Tuesday I bought three pair of Kobes for about 550.00 dollars. I sold those three pair of Kobes for 350.00 per pair and they sold in one day. I own my own shoe company ARCH. I've said this before on here, but I'll repeat it. Of the 600 plus pair of shoes I've made I can say 90% were purchased by people like you Troy. People who buy shoes not for the cool or hip factor, but to use them for what they were made for. The thing is Troy, the people like you tend to be white. But at the same time, the people who are buying the shoes at the crazy resell values tend to be white and not black. This is a generalization, but is basically true. Is there a problem when Black folks feel that their status is created by their shoes, yes. But, who do you blame? There has to be some personal responsibility in this. America is a capitalist society with an economy based on selling things to people, not making things, but selling things. In order to sell things, companies have to create a wow factor: Limited Edition, The Newest Model... The whole world of marketing is setup to create feelings within people of self worth based on these things. If people stopped buying, the economy in America would crash. Is this an excuse for the ridiculous things happening with sneakers, no but it definitely explains the amount of money pushed into making these things cool... and who doesn't want to be cool?