from the phila daily news
Jenice Armstrong | A hairy issue
MY KINKY roots are showing.
I'm reflecting on their existence more than usual as the issue of black women's hair makes headlines. As I write this, a class-action suit against Dillard's department store is working its way through the legal system, accusing the chain of charging its black customers higher prices than whites for shampoos.
And who could forget the brouhaha in March when a guard had the temerity to block U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's,D-Ga., entry into a House office building? Critics had a field day, saying that the congresswoman had gone unrecognized largely because she'd replaced what the Washington Post described as her "washerwoman" braids with a loose, Lenny Kravitz-like 'fro. McKinney, who struck the guard with a cell phone, became a laughingstock.
Meanwhile, Mablean Ephriam, formerly of "Divorce Court," was blaming hair for being at the root of her problems as well. Last month, she accused the Fox Entertainment Group of firing her because of her hair. Ephriam, who wore a wig last season, claimed Fox had demanded that she continue wearing it, saying it took too long to style her real hair. (Fox disputes her claim and said her firing had been over a money issue.)
Earlier this year, I wrote about how some business students at Hampton University had been prohibited from wearing "extreme" hairstyles, meaning dreadlocks, long braids or other non-mainstream looks. Some Daily News readers complained about my having questioned the historically black college's decision to have their students conform.
And then there was the disturbing case of the 7-year-old Memphis girl whose ballet teacher told her last fall she'd have to cut her dreadlocks to participate in a dance recital. Destini Berryeventually went on to perform, with her locks intact, but only after her mother threatened legal action.
As you can see, there's a silent but ongoing struggle going on about black women and our hair - how we wear it, whose hair we wear, or what we choose to do with it once it's on our heads. It's easy to blame the ignorance of racism. Frequently, that's the culprit.
Sometimes, though, it's self-imposed. There are the holier-than-thou among us who decry our wearing anything but the most natural of styles, meaning virgin, unprocessed locks. All kinds of political assumptions are made about people based upon their hair, often erroneously. What's amazing, though, is that black hair continues to be such a racially charged subject, especially to the point that stories about a woman's hair choices make newspaper headlines.
"When will Fox and the rest of America accept our cultural differences as African Americans and embrace us with all of our different hairstyles, hair textures, hair color... ?" Ephriam asked in the statement she released last month.
It's a hairy matter and one that shows that we, as a nation, still have a lot of growing to do.