Major League Baseball is back in St. Louis for 2014, and Busch Stadium has new neighbors. Ballpark Village, a new district in downtown St. Louis for dining, drinking, shopping and partaking in St. Louis sports culture, represents the completed first step in developing land left over by the 2006 construction of Busch Stadium III. The district and its many businesses celebrated opening from March 27 to April 7, the day the Cardinals played their home opener.

Fans took issue with the dress code implemented by several of Ballpark Village’s tenants. While common areas of Ballpark Village only ban backpacks and photography equipment, many bars and restaurants include the following policy on their page on the BPV website:

“The following is not permitted under our dress code after 9 p.m.: sleeveless shirts on men, profanity on clothing, exposed undergarments on men, sweat pants, full sweat suits, excessively long shirts (when standing upright with arms at your side, the bottom of your shirt can not extend below the tip of your fingers), jerseys (sleeved jerseys are permitted in conjunction with a cardinals [sic] game or any other major St. Louis sporting event), athletic shorts, excessively sagging pants or shorts, and bandanas.”

FOX Sports Midwest Live! was the only venue to respond by reversing the jersey ban. However, I argue that the history and intent underlying the entirety of these dress codes, which operate along lines of race and gender, are more problematic.

The two gendered items on the dress policy are “exposed undergarments” and “sleeveless shirts.” The former, in conjunction with “excessively sagging pants or shorts,” implies bias against dress commonly associated with young black males. Other non-gendered items on the list are associated with young black men, such as tall shirts and bandanas. Meanwhile, the specification of “on men” permits the uniform of female employees at The Barn at PBR, a BPV establishment. KSDK published a picture on its website of the uniform, which includes a cutoff top, a–less chaps and exposed underwear.

These policy items, then, uphold the Western male gaze, which polices, according to gender, the skin shown in formal clothing: more skin on women, less on men.

As a lifelong St. Louisan interested in the separation of sports culture, the corporation and systemic oppressions, I was disappointed when BPV became a taxpayer-funded business venture, a partnership between St. Louis, the Cardinals organization and the Cordish Company, a national real estate development and entertainment conglomerate. Researching Cordish’s other Midwestern establishments reveals a pattern of biased policies and controversies.

In Kansas City, where Cordish’s KC Power & Light district bans white tees and work boots, controversy arose when DJ Jazzy Jeff’s concert was cut short. In Louisville, Fourth Street Live banned backward baseball caps and sports jerseys in 2004. Fourth Street Live’s district-wide dress code, nearly identical to the BPV one, is prefaced with “Smart casual attire recommended: clothing that is fitted, neat and appropriate.” The Cordish dress code has come to St. Louis, where the “family friendly” Ballpark Village transforms into an “upscale nightclub” atmosphere after 9 p.m.

According to Cordish and these racially encoded dress codes, African-American culture and hip-hop culture are the antithesis of “family friendly,” “upscale” or “smart.”

One argument may say that because these policies don’t mention race, they aren’t racist policies. I encourage people making these arguments to read between the lines and research the history of such dress codes, dress codes which have been used to keep spaces segregated even after segregation, a morally reprehensible act in itself, was made explicitly illegal. This issue is about race and gender, and it’s furthermore about freedom and power. When businesses profit from the exclusion of people of color and sexualization of women, these groups lose societal and cultural agency while the business owners gain it.

We should suspect that Ballpark Village and its tenants, behind closed doors, are motivated to uphold this policy because the business of making rich, heterosexual white men comfortable is the kind of business they like doing, regardless of whether it is best for the community or even the most profitable. Partnering with Cordish and supporting its policies is a step backward for St. Louis, the Cardinals and the underrepresented.

As human beings and as a Washington University community embedded within a greater St. Louis community, we have a responsibility to speak out when we and our neighbors are being exploited and discriminated against, and to consider the politics of spaces we enter and businesses we support in the name of recreation.