![]() But when we started wearing it in the ‘80s with Run DMC, all they wanted to talk about was their deejay and their Adidas, but it took on a more criminal element. Skeletor had a hoodie, the grim reaper had a hoodie. And when I saw those three words on your shirt, I just needed to apologize to you.’ And that led to a 20-minute conversation and they exchanged phone numbers, and just the fact that that story exists is everything, you know? Just to know that impacted that guy in that moment, to help with his threat perception, or his implicit bias, that is pretty powerful. James was startled and he said, ‘What are you apologizing for?’ The guy said, ‘When you went in there with your hoodie on, I thought you were going to rob the place. Jason Sole: “ James Badue-El tells the story of how he was going into the gas station, and when he came out, a young white guy came up to him and apologized. Paul’s Community-First Public Safety Initiatives.įriday at the library, Sole told the story of how the hoodie project blew up after Wright wore a Humanize My Hoodie hoodie to New York fashion week, and the professional respect and personal affection between the two men was evident throughout the telling of how they came to be a duo. Sole is a Hamline University professor, former president of the Minneapolis NAACP, author of the 2014 book “From Prison to PhD: A Memoir of Hope, Resilience, and Second Chances,” and director of St. I teach criminal justice at Hamline, but I’ve also been incarcerated, and it’s important that this exhibit is next to the courthouse here, because all of our exhibitions are criminal justice-oriented.” “So I want to get over that stigma of the hoodie and black men right now. “I want to lift up Trayvon Martin. That boy should not have have died,” Sole told the audience of educators, librarians, activists and students. Jason Sole led the opening-night crowd through the Humanize My Hoodie exhibit Friday at the Brookdale Library in Brooklyn Center.įor the rest of June, library-goers in Brooklyn Center will be haunted by a mannequin wearing a red Humanize My Hoodie hoodie, posed with arms up, in obvious homage to the “hands up, don’t shoot” cry that was attributed to Michael Brown in 2014, and became a battle cry at protests and a shorthand elegy for all the young and old black men and women who have been killed by police, and profiled and demonized for their choice of clothing. “I’m a father, I’m an author, I’m a community member, a lot of people know me as an activist, I teach at Hamline University, and I teach criminal justice, but I’m also somebody who’s formerly incarcerated, so for me, I know what it’s like when I’ve got on a hoodie, versus when I have on a suit,” said Sole, who co-founded the Humanize My Hoodie brand/movement/hoodie with his friend and f ellow father/activist Andre Wright, the acclaimed Iowa-based fashion designer, brand label owner and photographer. ![]() In a riveting and impassioned two-hour presentation, Sole traced a history of racism as chronicled by everything from Frederick Douglass’ must-read “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” to Ava Duvernay’s must-see Netflix series “When They See Us,” and it’s no stretch to say that Sole’s small but growing Humanize My Hoodie movement/exhibit deserves to be mentioned in the same breath, and to be seen far and wide and outside the confines of a suburban library. ![]() ![]() “Slavery never ended,” Jason Sole told a group of about 60 who attended the opening of the Humanize My Hoodie art exhibition at the Brookdale Library Friday evening. ![]()
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