In the black community, because everyone is generally poor, any way you can show your material wealth is viewed as a way to show your superiority over other blacks. When a black guy goes through his community flashing the "bling" to everyone he is basically saying to other blacks that he is superior because he has big jewelry that they cannot afford. It started with oversized necklaces and rings and these "grills" are an idiotic extension of this. All these dumb schvartzas with grills will have their teeth crack and fall out in their mid 40s, mark my words.
Generally poor?
No. Go to a store and find out what the average sneaker a schvartza wears. It isn't cheap. Those sneakers they wear aren't cheap either not to mention the fact they wear different ones each days. They are not generally poor.
On this topic however this morning on the bus I heard the ridiculous argument that adam and eve were black people and so was jesus, that he had dreadlocks. If you ask me this is more a trend, claiming certain people especially the biblical characters to be black. Especially coming from people of such a young age.
(by the way no offence was meant towards the jewish people while bringing up jesus)
nobody would take offence to that.. though christians may take offence at the idea that jesus was black with dreadlocks ;-)
the black jesus concept isn't a trend, it's a long standing belief of theirs!
those "sneakers" are cheap if they are stolen..
actually I saw some nike ones that were cheap, I know they like nike.
note- in britain we call them trainers, in the US, sneakers. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent generic single word.
even poor people can spend alot on basic things sometimes.
for example, in britain, people on council estates(govt subsidised housing) tend to have satellite dishes, you can see rows of them.. Whereas middle class people are less likely to. It's a question of life focus.
It used to be that poor people were thin and rich were fat. Now it's the other way around.
Nowadays people don't go broke buying little things. Or maybe they do and afterwards they're broke!
It's not that they have lots of money to throw around. Their lifestyle is just focussed on their gear(cool clothes).