Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics

[MzSheel]

Seems Black women still can't catch a break... problem is, some are bringing Obama kids into fray by criticizing Malia's natural hairstyle that she sported while overseas - saying that her hair was inappropriate in representing the US!!   

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/fashion/27SKIN.html

I'm glad she has two strong parents to help guide her through...

[devineone]

This burns me up, these conservative (byword for) racist azz white folks talking about Malia’s hair!!  Where were they when Sara Palin’s daughter was a baby mama and her boyfriend was shacking up in their home?  Did they put their mouth on that and say SP is not a good representation of the family values we’d like to see in a VP of the U.S. because look at her baby having a baby?  Now these hypocritical MF’s want to talk about Malia’s hair. 

Man them racist MF'ers make me sick to my stomach spreading lies and putting down Obama’s speech to the school age kids at the start of the school year. Heck even Laura Bush endorsed it.  Yet they operate from a fear of him advocating socialism.  If they can band together against Obama, our president of the US, A Harvard and Columbia graduate, the living embodiment of the American dream, the ultimate American success story (which they're jealous of really), speaking to their kids and encouraging them to stay in school and go all the way, why can’t they git their shyt together and come together to monitor and ban their kids from facebook, myspace, youtube, and all of this other internet stuff kids get involved in unmonitored by parents that get in the way of their studies?  

OMG.  It’s a good thing I’m not a superhero or something because them stupid azz racist MF’ers would have long been obliterated from the planet with their sheeplike mentality and dumb ignant azzes. 

I liked this article on hair because it looked at and debated the issue from all sides and I look forward to seeing Chris Rock’s produced film.  I really liked this line by Paul Mooney, 

“If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed,” the comedian Paul Mooney, sporting an Afro, says in the documentary “Good Hair,” which won a jury prize at the Sundance film festival and comes out in October. “If your hair is nappy, they’re not happy.”

Still that said, I think the hair debate amongst black people about how black women wear their hair is just old and tired.  Hair is but a superficial covering just like any other topical covering on a mammal. Far too much weight is given to hair an easily altered superficial covering that in the end doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.  People temporarily alter themselves superficially all of the time.  They paint their nails, they paint their faces, they dye their ‘natural hair’,, they dred it, twist, it, braid it, weave braids into it etc.. (all of that is altering the hair temporily).   People wear clothes that send out different messages and that alter their body so why all the fuss on how black women wear their hair in 2009?  I’ve never understood that? 

Most of us don’t walk around wearing traditional African clothes nor do we practice traditional African culture.  I’m not African.  I’m a black woman from America.  How I wear my hair doesn’t change my race.  Heck when I was in Paris, I saw a lot of women straight from Africa wearing wigs, weave, makeup and everything else and dating white men so forget about it. Maybe they were doing it to be liked by the white guy but I also saw some African women with their hair shaved and natural with white men.  People need to just get over it and spend their energy concentrating on stuff that really matters rather than how somebody wears their hair.  It’s people’s right to do what in they want to with their hair.  I don’t consider people who wear dreds or locks (an altered form of natural hair just as perming is and is expensive too) any blacker than me. In fact, I have friends from Jamaica who say that in their country dreds are frowned upon because the Rastafarian culture is considered by some to be the same as how we look upon folks who wear their pants around their azzes in the gansta hip/hop culture.  My Jamaican friend told me that her parents didn’t allow their kids to dred their hair because that was considered thuggish and druggish in Jamaica.  It's a good article though thanks for sharing Mz. Sheel.

[Kamilah]

I checked out the pic of the style, and I immediately said, "what did they expect" all the styles we wear with our hair...

[da6cents]

Let's get real. Perming or straightening begin with the issues we've had with being Black. Now, like the N word, we want to turn it around and make it empowering 

And the really sad part is that even with the straightened hair care industry, we allowed ourselves to be dominated by non-Blacks. We can't get help until we admit that we are sick yall.

[devineone]

Seems Black women still can't catch a break...

No they seemingly can't when it comes to their hair.   I think what a person does and how they live their life has far more of an impact than how they wear their hair.  I can honestly say when I look back over the women and men who have had a major positive impact on my life, who have shaped and molded me for the better, what they ‘did’ in my life had the greatest impact.  How they wore their hair mattered very little and some I can barely remember. 

My maternal grandmother wore a wig because she had a childhood illness that resulted in her losing most of her hair.  I never once looked at my grandmother to ask her why she wore ‘white folks hair’ on her head? nor did I ask why didn’t she at least get an ‘Afro styled wig’.  I didn't care about that growing up.  I do remember my second grade teacher a black woman who always wore her hair pulled back and had a wig piece attached to it in the shape of a bun.  What I most remember about her was that she always made sure to call on me even when I didn't have my hand raised.  If I didn't do my homework, my folks knew about it.  She pushed me hard and I still remember her fondly to this day.  She was one of my favorite teachers!

Ms. HB made comments in her article Male struggle for control of Female sexuality which I think can apply here. Men should not define a woman’s value as a mate by the single criteria of what lies between her legs nor should men tie their egos up into their sexual organ and use their fear of pleasing their woman as a reason to sit in judgment of her sexual experience.

By the same token, I think that men and women should not tie their racial identity up solely on one superficial criteria ‘hair’ nor should they view how someone chooses to wear their hair as a way to pass judgment on whether that person values their race and who they are as a person.

I respect the right for people to have differences of opinions on this subject and if someone wishes to tie their racial identity up over something as superficial as hair, something that is often easily altered, then that is on them.  This however is not how I identify myself but to each his/her own.  We all have a right to our own viewpoints and ideas on how we choose to identify ourselves. But I don't think we should judge others negatively just because they don't share our viewpoints on racial identity as relates to how one wears their hair.

People of all races have been altering outward body coverings such as skin and hair and they have been influenced by people of different races and cultures, and classes for eons. From the ancient Greeks who heavily influenced the, Romans, to the Egyptians, to the dynasties in Asia to the tribes of Africa, to the N/A of the Americas, to the Incas, Mayans and other cultures in South America to the Anglo Saxons.  Some cultures conducted bodily mutilations for various social/sexual/identity/class reasons.  From the women of Japan who hobbled their feet, or painted their face with rice powder because that represented beauty to certain tribes in Africa whose women wore neck bands to extend their necks to the point that they would suffocate to death without these neck bands.  So this notion that altering the hair by relaxing means someone is ‘sick’ is not an idea I buy into.  Others can if they won’t but I don’t. 

I also don’t think in 2009 people are still acting under the influence that they are not proud of who they are when they alter their hair.  Maybe they simply just want to change up a bit because they are tired of wearing their hair the same way.  Since they have the ability to do that with relative ease nowadays, they simply do it. It doesn't have to be about some deep seated hidden psychological racial self hate issue.

I have relatives and friends, and even myself who temporarily alter their natural hair for a change.  My natural hair is kinky curly and sometimes when I want a change, I’ll flat iron it.  My sister’s hair is more wavy curly and she recently cut it and now wears it in a short curly fro but for years she relaxed it about twice a year and I did as well.  But we are still both black women and how we wear our hair doesn’t change that.  Why would it?  Hair is ‘hair' today’ and if we live long enough eventually gone tomorrow. (pun intended)   The irony is that my two nieces have always worn their hair natural, but because of their skin color and eye color, people tend to think they are biracial despite them having spirally curly hair and despite them having their dark skinned black dad standing right next to them.

Look at Stevie Wonder who’s worn his hair in braid for years. If he cut off his braids and went ahead and shaved his head bald (may as well since his braids are at the back of his head now) but if he did, that wouldn’t change the fact that he is still Stevie Wonder, one of the greatest musical geniuses of our time.  How he chooses to wear his hair has nothing to do with who he is as a man or his contributions to music. 

So yes women can’t catch a break either way.  Someone it seems is willing to pass judgment and to make an issue out of a nonissue when it comes to how a woman wears her hair. Both women and men do it.  But men who do it, I mean that’s like men judging women based on her sexuality or telling them they have no right to "choose".  Men aren’t women so I feel they are less equipped to pass judgment on what a woman is thinking when she decides how she ‘chooses’ to wear her hair these days.   

I have far more respect for a woman who is making a positive impact with her deeds in her community even if she goes and gets a perm every 6 weeks, over someone who wears a Dashiki and dreds, but does little to nothing positive to leave their mark in their community except make negative assumptions and judgments of others who don't dress like 'they' think they should to represent their race.

[da6cents]

By the same token, I think that men and women should not tie their racial identity up solely on one superficial criteria ‘hair’ nor should they view how someone chooses to wear their hair as a way to pass judgment on whether that person values their race and who they are as a person.

I don’t consider any part of the God-created human body ‘superficial’. Any maybe that’s part of the disagreement here. Our hair is an extension of our bodies. Its coil-like springy nature protects our scalp and keeps it moisturized. It protects us from head lice (almost nonexistent in Black people in the US due to our hair texture – It is said that in Africa, the lice have “adapted” claws so we know who brought the lice there if they had to “adapt” to affect Africans). Some Black folks even believe that it is spiritual and an antennae to God (The Rastafarians, I think, believe this which is why they don’t cut it). The hair being a superficial adornment used merely to attract and externally “beautify” a person has always been a European concept in my mind for obvious reasons already mentioned.

People of all races have been altering outward body coverings such as skin and hair and they have been influenced by people of different races and cultures, and classes for eons.

Just because ‘everyone does it and has been doing it for a long time’ doesn’t mean it’s right.

From the ancient Greeks who heavily influenced the, Romans, to the Egyptians, to the dynasties in Asia to the tribes of Africa, to the N/A of the Americas, to the Incas, Mayans and other cultures in South America to the Anglo Saxons.  Some cultures conducted bodily mutilations for various social/sexual/identity/class reasons.  From the women of Japan who hobbled their feet, or painted their face with rice powder because that represented beauty to certain tribes in Africa whose women wore neck bands to extend their necks to the point that they would suffocate to death without these neck bands.  So this notion that altering the hair by relaxing means someone is ‘sick’ is not an idea I buy into.  Others can if they won’t but I don’t.

Whenever someone alters their natural appearance to please someone else and/or because they no longer believe it to be attractive, then they are sick. If Black folks didn’t think negatively about Black businesses to the point of non-support, if the rate of interracial marriages wasn’t increasing while Black on Black marriages were decreasing, if we didn’t have children who created while we danced to music that disparaged our women and celebrated slavery (check Lil Wayne’s ‘Whip It Like a Slave’), if Black men didn’t abandon their children in such large numbers and if Black women didn’t get their hair permed while talking negatively about their God-given ‘nappy hair’ then maybe I too would believe we didn’t have issues with our blackness and therefore weren’t sick. Perming is a symptom, like the other negative behavior we exemplify on a daily basis due to our own mental illness, plain and simple.

I also don’t think in 2009 people are still acting under the influence that they are not proud of who they are when they alter their hair….. It doesn't have to be about some deep seated hidden psychological racial self hate issue.

The factors that influenced perming and hair straightening in the early part of the 20th century still remain today. Our blackness is still negatively stereotyped while the European image of beauty is exalted. Everything from the news to music videos is subliminally planted in our minds (particularly for those who don’t pay attention) to tell us that Black is still not as good as white. White neighborhoods are safe while Black neighborhoods are dangerous (despite all the Black middle class and affluent neighborhoods around the country). White men represent business and success, while Black men represent entertainment and criminality. White women are virtuous while Black women are over-sexualized. White hair is long, silky, pretty and manageable while Black hair is stiff, dry and untamable. Which is why Chris Rock’s daughter came home to her permed-weave wearing Mother and expressed her disappointment with her natural beautiful hair. Our children are honest while we are in denial because they haven’t yet learned to lie to themselves. Unfortunately they will eventually catch up and hence the cycle continues.

I have far more respect for a woman who is making a positive impact with her deeds in her community even if she goes and gets a perm every 6 weeks, over someone who wears a Dashiki and dreds, but does little to nothing positive to leave their mark in their community except make negative assumptions and judgments of others who don't dress like 'they' think they should to represent their race.

I understand and agree with this. However just because someone is doing positive things in the community doesn’t mean he/she doesn’t have issues with their Blackness (Nor does being natural signify that they love themselves).  Particularly if it’s for fashion and can become straightened or perm at a moment’s notice. My beliefs based on the conversations I’ve had with Sistas I know who are natural for different reasons is that once a person understands the historical and cultural context of natural and straightened hair they become natural for a different reason and going straight or perming is no longer an option for them.

[devineone]

I don’t consider any part of the God-created human body ‘superficial’.

I use the term superficial as relates to hair in an anatomical context.  Anatomically speaking hair is a superficial covering meaning that it lies on the outermost 'exterior of the skin (cutis) and hair is not pertinent to the survival of the human body.  Meaning a person can still live without it.  In anatomy, superficial is a directional term that tells that something is located more externally than something else as in the case of 'hair.' It can also be used as a value in the necessity of a something to the survival of the body.  You can survive without your hair, and not having it doesn't affect the quality of your life, as it would if you lost your sight (though you could survive). But you can't survive without your heart/brain/lungs etc..

The opposite of 'superficial anatomically speaking is 'deep' and since we're talking about hair' which is the most superficial part of our cutis (skin) you have more pertinent parts crucial to the survival of the body as we look at the layers of the skin such as your epidermis, dermis, subcutaneous tissue, (well I shouldn't have digressed in a mini anatomy lesson here. )

Any maybe that’s part of the disagreement here.

Our disagreement is that I don't put all the social weight of the 'black world on 'hair' nor do I define my racial identity up in hair.  That's ok that this is your stance and it's ok that we disagree here. We can agree to disagree (as usual)  
We don't have to see eye to eye on this issue and we won't.  I'm not trying to convince you to change your stance, and nothing you can say will convince me to change mine. 

Some Black folks even believe that it is spiritual and an antennae to God (The Rastafarians, I think, believe this which is why they don’t cut it).

That's an interesting beliefs the Rastafarians have of the hair serving as an antenae.  Considering the fact that biologically the hair shaft is 'dead once it pushes through the follicle that would be impossible, but then this is where biology and beliefs part ways. This is not unusual as science and spiritual beliefs don't always mesh.  I'm spiritual and I love science and biology and for me (quirky as it seems) I can live with that in most instances.   

Hair on human head is not designed anatomically the same as hair which make up the whiskers on dogs and cats and actually does act as antenae for them.

The hair being a superficial adornment used merely to attract and externally “beautify” a person has always been a European concept in my mind for obvious reasons already mentioned

Historically hair used as an adornment and beautification is not strictly a European concept. Ancient Egyptians were known for altering their hair and they also wore wigs people in Asia did as well.  Japanese Geisha women wore elaborate coiffures .

Just because ‘everyone does it and has been doing it for a long time’ doesn’t mean it’s right.

I say let the person decide what they feel is 'right' for what they want to do with their own hair. It's not my place to impose my values and judgement on how someone chooses to wear their hair anymore than it would be my place to tell someone they should or shouldn't get a tatoo or a body piercing. (I've been contemplating a navel and maybe a nose piercing for a while now and want to get one but afraid of the pain. I want to get a G clef with a blue note (sapphire) through the loop for my navel and a very tiny silver F clef for my nose.

Whenever someone alters their natural appearance to please someone else and/or because they no longer believe it to be attractive, then they are sick.

I think this comment is an oversimplication of the comments I made about historically how different cultures/races of the world altered their appearances for various reasons.  We'll agree to disagree here to and leave it at that.  This is also a gross misjudgement of someone's character calling them sick.  This would mean if women put on makeup,  wax, their eybrows, pierce their body, shave/wax their body hairs wore heels, painted their nails, all of these things alter their natural physical appearance (albeit temporily) but it still alters it. Women do this to feel attractive for themselves, and they also do this to be attractive towards the object of their affection not because they are 'sick' as you put it.  And what about what the men do to alter their bodies?

If Black folks didn’t think negatively about Black businesses to the point of non-support, if the rate of interracial marriages wasn’t increasing while Black on Black marriages were decreasing, if we didn’t have children who created while we danced to music that disparaged our women and celebrated slavery (check Lil Wayne’s ‘Whip It Like a Slave’), if Black men didn’t abandon their children in such large numbers and if Black women didn’t get their hair permed while talking negatively about their God-given ‘nappy hair’ then maybe I too would believe we didn’t have issues with our blackness and therefore weren’t sick. Perming is a symptom, like the other negative behavior we exemplify on a daily basis due to our own mental illness, plain and simple.

Lots of social commentary that are valid points but IMO puts too much weight on how someone chooses to wear their hair as the 'key answer' to solving these concerns.  Again I'll agree to disagree on this one too.   This is too simplistic in thinking  that if  black women collectively stopped relaxing their hair suddenly the ills of the black community would be solved.  (And why is it that the onus lies on the woman to bear the responsibility of the ills of the black community because of how she  chooses to wear her hair?).  What about the man?  Goodness! black women are responsible for everything including bearing the fate of the black community in the way they wear their hair. That's a heavy load!    How about how men choose to wear their hair?  Are we going to get into that discussion?  How is that influential in the black community?  How about how men choose to dress?  I'll  Agree to disagree here too.

Our blackness is still negatively stereotyped while the European image of beauty is exalted. Everything from the news to music videos is subliminally planted in our minds (particularly for those who don’t pay attention) to tell us that Black is still not as good as white.

Yes I agree in some part here, but I think this has more to do with the type of woman that is preferred more so than how that woman wears her hair.  As Kanye West put it, biracial women are preferred (so this isn't about a woman choosing to perm her hair).  If black women stopped perming their hair, that wouldn't change who the black men, are choosing to find attractive and put in their videos. 

The factors that influenced perming and hair straightening in the early part of the 20th century still remain today.

And this country isn't static as Obama once said in his racial speeh following the Rev. Wright fallout.  While things haven't progressed to where we would like them to be as evidenced by conservative bloggers who commented negatively about Malia's hair,  they aren't where they were in the early part of the 20th century either.

I see white folks emulating the way black people wear their hair all of the time.  In fact, when I wear my hair natural to work, which I tend to do in the summer, it's the white folks who compliment me ALL of the time on how much they like my hair.  When I flat iron it, they'll literally come up to me to ask me why I did that and tell me they'd rather I wear it curly (their words).  Then they'll go on to say they wish their hair could do something other than be straight.

White neighborhoods are safe while Black neighborhoods are dangerous (despite all the Black middle class and affluent neighborhoods around the country). White men represent business and success, while Black men represent entertainment and criminality. White women are virtuous while Black women are over-sexualized.

I don't see the connection here to how  black women choose to wear their hair.

White hair is long, silky, pretty and manageable while Black hair is stiff, dry and untamable.

If every black woman stopped perming her hair, what would you do with the 'black women' who have naturally silky straight hair or hair that is not as 'african in it's texture?  My mother's hair is long and wavy and is naturally that way. (well not so long anymore since she cut it).  Again I think a lot of ills are being put on 'relaxed hair that really go beyond black women relaxing their hair.  It is an oversimplication to tie the racial ills in our community to how black women choose to wear their hair.

Which is why Chris Rock’s daughter came home to her permed-weave wearing Mother and expressed her disappointment with her natural beautiful hair.

I wonder... would you still sneer at Chris Rock's wife if she was wearing her hair in braids with fake synthetic hair added into the braids the way black women often do when they get their hair braided?  Let's even say her own hair was natural, but she still had synthetic hair braided into her hair."braid style"  African women in Harlem who braid hair, almost always braid in fake hair for length and style. 
 

Our children are honest while we are in denial because they haven’t yet learned to lie to themselves. Unfortunately they will eventually catch up and hence the cycle continues.

Agree to disagree on this one too.  I'm not in denial, nor am I sick or any of those things you are trying to attribute to me just because I don't see eye to eye with you.  The folks in my family are doing just fine, even my neices and if anyone should have identity problems it should be them poor kids.  I'm sure they get tired of answering the same questions to blacks and whites alike if they are biracial when they are not.  And their parent's haven't altered their hair.

I understand and agree with this. However just because someone is doing positive things in the community doesn’t mean he/she doesn’t have issues with their Blackness

We all have issues of some sort or other, issues with money, education, ambition, love, health, etc... I don't think the issue of "blackness' as relates to how someone chooses to wear their hair" should be viewed as the be all end all make or break issue that is the detriment of a black woman. 

Someone once said that which you focus on, you strengthen.  I chose not to focus wrapping my racial identity up in the way I wear my hair.  Nor do I choose to attach much of the social ills of the black community  that you mentioned on how black women choose to wear their hair.   You can do that but I don’t think of it that way.  We'll agree to disagree on the hair issue and let it go. But thanks for sharing your thoughts it was interesting reading them.  I'll let you carry this 'hair burden'.   I'm not claiming that.

My beliefs based on the conversations I’ve had with Sistas I know who are natural for different reasons is that once a person understands the historical and cultural context of natural and straightened hair they become natural for a different reason and going straight or perming is no longer an option for them.

At the end of the day it is just that 'your beliefs.' nothing more and nothing less. And your beliefs carry no more weight than mine or anyone else's.  We all are entitled to our own beliefs and opinons. I'm not one to take on someone else's beliefs just because they 'said so or they believe something' or they think a certain way.  I have my own mind, values, belief system and principles in place. 

What matters most is we get to choose how we wish to live and what beliefs we wish to have and to practice in our own lives. And we get to choose how we want to wear our hair and we can do it without the fate of the world of black folks resting on our 'scalps'.