panafrica said:
Now if Madame CJ Walker was denigrating black women, I'd have to agree with you. However she wasn't, she offered beauty products to make women attractive. This is in no way, shape, or form an equal comparison!
Brother Pan, that would mean that using various hair colors are not denigrating the natural beauty of African women either, so I don't understand what your particular problem with that would be... If you say it is an issue of identification with a beauty standard outside of the African norm, then straightening the hair in the context of these United States is absolutely the same as coloring the hair to achieve a European likeness... We know this, and we should not be disingenuous about it...
Of course a sister can, and will, say that she doesn't even think in this manner when she's getting her perm, but therein' lies the damage that has been done... I am sure the sister on the continent doesn't CONSCIOUSLY think she's trying to achieve a European likeness when she does the skin bleaching thing, but unconsciously(where MOST human thinking actually takes place, at the subconcious level)that is precisely what is happening...
That was NOT, however, the point I was making entirely... It seems to me that Madame C.J. gets a pass because she was a great businesswoman, and using that as a justification, only, to put folks on pedastals is dangerous, hence I put the names of those hiphop entrepreneurs out there...
We are not measuring the degree of wrong, we are measuring WRONG... Using these chemicals and straightening combs is not, nor has it ever been, a healthy thing for African women, and has, in fact, damaged more than it's share of scalps... If folks want to turn away from that sad fact, and say, "yeah, so what", then by all means, do that... Just don't ask me to do same... Don't ask me to suspend my consciousness to say that Madame C.J. was following in the path of her African ancestors when she invented her pomade... We both know that's a lotta nonsense, don't we Pan?(smile!)
That being said, I gave sister her props as an entrepreneur, and that's all she's entitled to from my perspective... Again, from MY PERSPECTIVE...
Peace!
Isaiah