Students showcase dangerousNegro line

Media Credit: Travis Brown/East Tennessean Students with Black Affairs Association showcased dangerousNegro's fashion line

The first Hip-Hop Fashion Show at ETSU was held Friday, as the last event of African American Arts Week. Prior to the show, a lecture was given by Demetrius Walker, co-owner of dangerousNegro clothing line.
If the name dangerousNegro stirs feelings of uneasiness then it has done its job, according to Walker.
“The name gets attention but it also has a message behind it, like everything we do,” said Walker.
The name originated as a term the government used to brand certain Civil Rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr.
A disdain for complacency is why the government deemed them dangerous, and the same concept is the theme of the dangerousNegro clothing line.
Common, Mos Def, Wyclef and other celebrities have been seen wearing dangerousNegro shirts. Since starting the company in December 2005, Walker has traveled to schools across the country and discussed entrepreneurship with students of all ages.
Noticing a rise in the popularity of shirts with what Walker referred to as “ignorant messages like Dopeman, or I got it for Cheap,” he began developing a clothing line to present positive messages.
“Clothes are the first thing you notice when you see someone, so we want to put forth something uplifting,” he said.
After attending Vanderbilt, Walker graduated and entered the corporate world working for Dell.
Working within corporate America, he came to view it as a modern day plantation system.
“In my heart, I feel its slavery,” said Walker.
His employers viewed him not as Demetrius Walker, but as worker number 40991.
He continued to grow increasingly miserable “working the fields on corporate America’s plantation.”
The breaking point occurred when a supervisor chastised him for not taking care of a task during his break time.
His supervisor said, “When you are in this office, I own you.”
Walker quit immediately.
“I saw this old slave auction flier from a newspaper from 1859,” Walker said. “Valuable young negros, field hands, with no fault. It cost $1,600 to buy a man in the prime of his life. If you adjust that for inflation, that comes to around $32,500. Today, a resume serves the same purpose as a modern day slave flier.