Donald Trump was ridiculed Saturday after attending what his campaign called a Black roundtable at a Detroit church — with photos showing a largely white audience.
Trump’s campaign reached out to the 180 Church to set up the event at which attendees asked a handful of questions before bursting into a rendition of Happy Birthday.
The evangelical church is in the heart of Detroit’s west side and has a mainly Black congregation.
But photos caught by the media, and shared widely online, showed a lot of white people in the audience.
That might be part of it and seems practical. I think another was that men taking off a helmet/lifting a visor was a thing - similar to (possible?) origins of the handshake - military men signifying they mean no harm.
Norms change over time - used to be, until JFK, there was even more rituals conformed to around men and hats until he came along. JFK was apparently blamed for men mostly abandoning the hat, but apparently that was building before he came along…in today’s world, I don’t know that it makes a whole lot of sense for something decorative like a hat to have all these rules only apply to one gender…might have been a time when someone got the vapors over a guy not removing his hat when he entered a library, church, etc…but I suppose that sort of thing is fading nearly daily. People don’t always wear a suit and tie everywhere, either…
While it doesn’t really exude “classy” vibes to have some guy sitting in a church wearing a hat, or, even worse, a hat with a slogan most Americans associate with a hate group, but if violating fading fashion norms was all these people were doing, I doubt too many would care.
Yeah hats went way down long before JFK like pre WWII