There’s a difference between poor, middle-class, and rich. The idea is that the middle class want to mimic the rich to look higher status. The rich don’t want the middle class to get away with it. The rich can mimic the poor and not be taken for being poor but the middle class can’t, so the rich steal the poor’s fashion.
Rich white kids also have more contact with ghetto kids than poor white kids do, with lower upper middle class white kids in the expensive burbs having the least contact with ghetto kids.
It sounds to me like you’re asking a historical question, while the first two answers give theoretical answers. But the theory is relevant: the rich don’t care about the poor, so it doesn’t matter if poor white kids adopt the fashion. The claim is that the rich adopted it before the middle class.
I think this whole discussion need more concreteness.
Are you saying that rich white kids adopted ghetto fashion before poor white kids did? Doesn’t ring very true to me.
There’s a difference between poor, middle-class, and rich. The idea is that the middle class want to mimic the rich to look higher status. The rich don’t want the middle class to get away with it. The rich can mimic the poor and not be taken for being poor but the middle class can’t, so the rich steal the poor’s fashion.
This works with signalling about values as well.
[comment deleted]
Poor kids had ghetto clothes first; rich kids had the clothes second, but ghetto fashion first.
Rich white kids also have more contact with ghetto kids than poor white kids do, with lower upper middle class white kids in the expensive burbs having the least contact with ghetto kids.
It’s not a question of contact, it’s a question of seeing that fashion in the media, i.e. via rap stars and so on.
I didn’t understand this. Why would rich white kids have any more contact with ghetto kids?
They both live in cities.
It sounds to me like you’re asking a historical question, while the first two answers give theoretical answers. But the theory is relevant: the rich don’t care about the poor, so it doesn’t matter if poor white kids adopt the fashion. The claim is that the rich adopted it before the middle class.
I think this whole discussion need more concreteness.