Sure you can tell a book by the cover!

I was walking down the street with a friend of mine (or maybe now an ex-friend) who happens to be a black woman and an attorney. Here in Portland, the bus mall is one of the most active drug marts in the city.

I saw some 20-ish guys and gals hanging out on a corner wearing Oakland Raiders jackets. And not just jackets, but bulky winter-style jackets. This is in June, mind you.

I made some reference to them as gangsters and probably drug dealers and she was all over me with "You can't tell a book by the cover. You don't know they're gangsters."

My reply was short and sweet and may have cost me some degree of friendship at least for a while: "Are you, a black woman, honestly telling me that if you saw a bunch of guys coming down the street in white sheets and pointy hats and carrying a burning cross, you wouldn't make any assumptions about their values and attitudes?"

Her silence then and during lunch told me I had scored a hit, but at a price.

We do use our clothing to announce who we are, what our values and attitudes are, and what you can likely expect from us.

If a kid dresses like a gangster, maybe he's not in a gang, but he's telling us that he admires gangs and gang values and that we can expect to be treated by him as though he were in a gang.

My friend is a dignified person committed to truth, justice, and the American Way, who wants to be perceived that way, and so she does not dress like a gangster bitch, which is not to say she doesn't dress like a bitch.

Female attorneys dress like a different kind of bitch and it doesn't involve wearing a print dress and ribbons and bows in her hair to court.

Maybe you can't tell everything about someone by their attire, but their attire is trying to shape what you think about them, which in itself reveals their values.