California State University-Northridge Professor Marquita Gammage, who teaches Africana Studies, lashed out at the new Balenciaga because the new $1,190 appropriates black culture:
Balenciaga’s very pricey sweatpant/boxer combo — $1,190 retail — is just that: It features what look like boxers “peeking out from the [sweats’] waistband,” according to CNN Style. It’s a popular look, particularly among young black men.However, controversy arose after a TikTok user posted a video about the pants, saying “This feels racist […] They’ve woven the boxers inside the trouser.”Africana Studies Professor Marquita Gammage told CNN she also was “disturbed” by the pants, claiming they represent an “exploitation of Black culture with the hopes of securing major profits.”
While sagging pants — which often involve jeans or sweatpants lowered past the waist, with boxer underwear exposed at the top of the waistline — have been popularized in hip hop culture, the style has also “been used to criminalize Blacks, especially Black males as thugs and a threat to American society,” Gammage said.“Balenciaga men’s Trompe-L’Oeil sweatpants in red triggers immediate concern given the grotesque similarity to the iconic African American hip hop aesthetic worn by Black Americans for decades that has resulted in the imprisonment and death of Black men,” Gammage told CNN over email. “The trousers have commercial cultural appropriation written all over them; branded with the name Balenciaga.”
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