Good Hair-Bad Hair

Today's lesson on Black culture is one that everyone over 30 can totally understand. It's why Beyonce` gets whiter and blonder everytime I see her, why Gabrielle Union has hair almost as long as mine only hers is a weave. It's the reason that a great deal of black women cringe when they see my dreds. There are looks and stares of disbelief. And there is the certainty that I must have had it "braided in". Or upon finding that they are real, the next question " is are they clean?"

And then more questions come. Why? Don't you like to comb your hair? Do you wash it? Now those are the nicest of the demeaning comments. Are you Rasta? Do you smoke dope? These are the ones you take in stride. And then there are the elders, they want to touch it and are surprised the root is soft and straight. The befuddled looks are immediate. "But why would you that to your hair when you've got such "good hair"? Inwardly I laugh-imagine my hair on the fast track to Yale and then I loc it the now it's bad hair out robbbing banks, hitting 40s. staying out past curfew. Please. It's my now "bad hair" is going to wrap itself around someone's throat while the rest, not unlike tentacles, searches for your wallet.. In the interim "good hair", straight, slightly wavy but good.Another reference to slavery and division. Houseslaves versus field hands. All of us are black and yet some think that these minor differences make one group think that it is inherently better than the other. It all reminds me of the Spike Lee movie "School Daze"

Here are a few examples help you understand the pettiness at the black side of water cooler:
light skinnned, good hair, trophy wife, too skinny. She got the job because she can pass for white. I wonder who she screwed to get that position. It never ends. Is it possible to get any blacker? She can put fingerprints on charcoal. This is what affirmative action gets you. She knows she could do something with her hair. Did you see how nappy it is? Those dreds just look nasty,does she wash them? I guess she thinks she's from Africa.

For 400 years, the standard of beauty in America has been the white woman, the aquiline nose, flat hinnie, light-porceline skin. She has been the untouchable prize. Black men have been murdered on her word, for looking in her direction, for not moving into the street and allowing her the entire sidewalk. Meanwhile, the rest of America has moved forward and we in Oklahoma are still in the18th century. The perception that any white woman - a toothless crackhead with 5 kids is better than a morally upright black woman with no children, but with dreds.

Old school knows good hair-bad hair. New school is clueless. Raised on blond weave, trying to look like Beyonce who's trying to look like Britney who's trying to look like God only knows. The new school is more interested in "Good weave-bad weave". Now don't get me wrong. This is America and anyone is free to do whatever s/he wants with his or her hair. My problem with it is that many are so into unrealized self-hatred, that we don't understand why we want straight blond hair. Well why "some" want straight blonde hair. I'm content with my dreds that reach my hinnie. Not weave, not yak hair, but mine. Besides, if I ever lost my mind and decided that I wanted to be blonde but keep this length, it would be a minimum of a two year process with no guarentee that it would work. And we haven't discussed money!

Anyway, I"ll take my bad hair anyday because it represents a part of me, my history that I'm proud to carry through my genes. There is alot to be said for being black. Let's start with "Black is beautiful!"