Threads and Tales by Sofia: Quarter Zips > Nike Techs and the Alt-Right Pipeline

By Sofia Lamdichi | November 17, 2025

W.E.B Du Bois

Photo Credit: Addison Norton Scurlock | WikiMedia Commons

The rise in young Black men putting down the practice of wearing Nike techs. They are classifying those who do wear Nike Techs as aggressive, ghetto, unprofessional, and immature. Men who wear quarter-zip shirts are often perceived as professional, patient, masculine, and approachable. This may be something some of you applaud, but it should be something that is feared. When it is laid out in front of you, it becomes clear that this trend is heavily influenced by white supremacy. Young Black men promoting such apparent racial stereotypes and propaganda seemingly without knowing it is alarming, especially in a time period where many have the ability to learn about the effects of white supremacists and how they categorize black people. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting to fold away your Nike Tech suit and pull out a quarter zip sweater. However, claiming that doing so suddenly removes the negative traits one had before wearing a quarter zip is not comedic; it opens up the doors for the alt-right pipeline to suck in young, impressionable Black men. It should make you wonder why you believe a proximity to whiteness makes you a better citizen than being perceived as a young Black man. The answer is racism and the white supremacy embedded into this country since its colonization. 

It will only become increasingly difficult to deter the ignorance that lies within us due to white supremacist stereotypes when a viral trend promotes them. This mindset is tragically self-defeating. It does not challenge the racist structure; it seeks to assimilate into it by abandoning a cultural marker of Black youth. It elevates the white aesthetic as the gold standard of decency and competence, thereby promoting the very ideologies of white supremacy that classify a natural, unfiltered expression of Black identity as inherently flawed or dangerous.

The most alarming consequence of this rhetorical framework is its potential to be exploited by the very forces of white supremacy it attempts to navigate. When a young Black man attributes his perceived professional improvement or social success solely to shedding a "Black" item and adopting a "white" one, he becomes vulnerable to the ideological manipulation of the alt-right pipeline.

It is time to be afraid, not of the quarter-zip, but of the logic that promotes it as a moral and social cleanser. The real work is not in folding away the Nike Tech, but in unfolding the layers of conditioning that lead us to believe that proximity to whiteness makes us better.

Young Black men must be encouraged to develop a critical consciousness; an understanding of the socio-political and economic forces that shape their reality. The focus must shift from adjusting our appearance to fit a racist world to demanding that the world recognize the inherent worth of Black identity in all its forms, whether it is expressed in a bespoke suit or a Nike Tech Fleece. The liberation is in the confidence to wear whatever one chooses without fear and without internalizing the negative labels placed upon us by a society designed to keep us down.

This debate is not new; it is merely the latest iteration of respectability politics, a historical strategy of assimilation employed by marginalized groups that assumes that if Black individuals behave, dress, and speak in a manner deemed "proper" by the dominant white culture, they will be granted full access to rights and respect.

From W.E.B. Du Bois's advocacy for the "Talented Tenth" to earlier critiques of African American hairstyles and speech patterns, the core logic has remained the same: change the Black person, not the racist system. By claiming that wearing a quarter-zip removes negative traits, young men are inadvertently promoting the idea that those who choose the Nike Tech are responsible for the discrimination they face. This dangerous line of reasoning deflects attention from the structural racism that is the true source of their limited opportunities and places the entire burden of equality onto the individual's choice of attire.