The Lace Mafia?

My wife forwarded to me an iota of info she found trolling some news sites. It seems that a school district in Merrillville, Indiana has banned their middle- and high-school students from wearing pink clothing or accessories, due to fears of gang violence. My first reaction was (roughly) "you've got to be kidding," so I looked around. It seems that there is a gang in Chicago (not too far away) called the Imperial Gangsters, and their chosen "colors" are pink and black.

I can understand the desire to keep the youngsters out of harms way, but pink? I mean, it's a dubious tactic at best to ban a "gang color." Gangs can change colors, and different gangs (and there are lots of 'em) have different colors (presumably why these guys got stuck with pink). You can't seriously expect to ban them all. You'll have these poor kids running around in nothing at all!

What's more, the ABC affiliate out of Oklahoma, KTUL (what a K-tool!), included, at the bottom of their article, a nice couple of warning signs that your child may be in a gang:
1) "If your child prefers only one color or even refuses to wear other colors"
2) " if their friends all wear one color"
Those should be warning signs to all of us parents. Monochromatic=gang. I'd hate to think what my mother must think of me now. When I was younger, I wore almost exclusively black. Yes, I even wore a black trenchcoat. Man, I might have been in a gang and didn't even know it! Heck, I should go back through my yearbook and see if I shot anybody. You can't be too careful.

--Beav (I'm watchin you...I mean me...)