The Politics Of Hair -- For A Black Woman, Hair Can Carry Hidden Message Of Beauty, Acceptance And Even Internalized Racism

Last summer my older brother and I got into an argument about hair. We were sitting in my mother's front yard in New Mexico and I complimented his wife on her new hairdo.

She said she'd actually wanted another style, that she had let her hair be natural, but my brother hadn't liked that. Why, I asked him?

Well, he said, women look better with long hair. That launched me into a speech on culturally based judgments about appearance. Wasn't he forgetting that back in Africa among our ancestors the women would not have had long, processed hair?

"I don't live in Africa. Read the Bible. It says long hair is a woman's glory."

Hair is more than head-warming adornment.

It affects how we are classified by other people which in turn helps determine how we are treated and often how we feel about ourselves.

It is you in a way that clothes or other decorations are not.

Last month the Douglass-Truth Library in Seattle hosted a discussion of African-American hair, which had been in the news recently.

In one case, a white Brooklyn teacher was transferred to another school after parents raised a fuss about her reading the book "Nappy Hair" to her mostly black and Latino class. The book is about a little girl whose nappy hair is something to feel good about.

In the other story, a black group would not allow a woman with dreadlocks to attend its debutante ball.

Of the several people who gave up a rare sunny afternoon to attend the talk, all except one were women.

One had let her hair go natural as part of a personal evolution. Another because she couldn't afford expensive hair care. One talked about people being shocked that she would let her beautiful hair go back to nature.

Women in general are burdened with more appearance-related expectations than men, but the impact is magnified for black women.

African Americans can be born with any kind of hair, from long, straight and blond to short, black and tightly curled. Most of the conversation that Saturday was about that tightly curled hair, which is unique, unlike the hair of any other people.

Jean Harris, an anthropology instructor at Highline Community College, and Audrey Wright, an English and social-science instructor at Seattle Central Community College, led the discussion.

Harris, who has done a study on how people feel about hair styles, said hair is shorthand that carries messages about gender, ethnicity, religion, emotional state and politics. In the case of black folks in this country, it has been one of those things used to denigrate a people.

For centuries, any difference between European and African descendants in America has been used as an indication of the inferiority of African Americans.

The two outward features that are most different are skin color and hair texture.

Black folks have spent fortunes on skin-lightening creams and hair-straightening products - trying so hard to fit in and be accepted.

Generations of little black girls have sat in kitchen chairs trying hard not to squirm while their mothers dragged smoking-hot metal combs through their hair to tame the curls. Burns and blisters were part of the bargain. Chemicals now do that work, and their own damage.

The conversation that Saturday got around to "Nappy Hair."

"Nappy Hair" was written by a black woman and intended as a celebration of black hair, but the parents of one child in the Brooklyn class thought their child had been insulted and damaged by the book.

Hair, like skin color, is just something many black folks don't discuss in front of white people. For some it's just too painful, too embarrassing.

Wright, who recently taught a class called "Hair: Sex, Science & Symbolism," said most students who weren't black didn't know about various issues involving black hair. For many of them hair was something to experiment with, but often "for African-American women hair was almost a curse."

Wright said the whole "Nappy Hair" thing might have been diffused if the media hadn't picked it up.

Once a bunch of people knew about it, they rallied to the parents' side and it became difficult to back off and save face when it became clear that the book was fine and the teacher was, too.

We expect to be judged harshly and sometimes we judge harshly.

There was a discussion at the library on whether having straight hair means a person is ashamed of being black, or that she just likes the look. What about black women who die their hair red or blond?

We are not just transplanted Africans, Harris said. Rather than deny our genetic and cultural mixture we should see it as enriching us.

Does having dreadlocks mean you are a scary radical?

Wright has locks and Harris is changing to locks because she likes the look. They may not intend a political statement, but some people will read it that way - dreadlocks as resistance to whiteness.

What's a woman to do?

Valerie Garrett-Turner, the librarian who hosted the gathering, says when she had braided hair, some people seemed afraid to approach her, but with her hair permed, people see her as friendly.

In some professions, having natural hair could cost a job or a promotion. If there was any prevailing sentiment, it was that a woman ought to be able to wear her hair any way she wants without being judged.

Most parents of children in that Brooklyn school changed their opinion and praised the young teacher once they had read the entire book. You can't judge a book by its cover or a person by her hair.

But as Harris pointed out, as long as race is an issue, everything associated with it will be an issue.