Hair in the Public Square
Rhonda Lee is a woman who used to be a meteorologist for
KTSB until she was fired. She was fired over really defending her hair in a
positive very mature way. Now, this station had gotten racist comments on their
Facebook pages and in this snippet, KTSB 3 actually LIKED the post she got
fired over in essence. She was told that she was being fired over a social
media policy that was unwritten. My guess is that they wanted her gone and
found a reason to do so. She claims that her hair had gotten her in trouble
before. I wonder why. See hair is not only an extension of ourselves, it’s a
way that we can be creative, when a woman changes her hair she wants people to
notice because it looks nice and she feels good. She’s fishing for compliments
and when you pay them to her by noticing her hair it feels good. Then the post
of “she looks like a hot mess cancer patient comes up” the post Emmett Vascou
put up says: the black lady that does the news is a very
nice lady. The only thing is she needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair. I’m
not sure if she is a cancer patient. But still it’s not something myself that i
think looks good on TV. What about letting someone a male have waist long hair
do the news? What about that
But hair in the workplace is something that has been talked about mainly with the issue of dreads. I personally think in a corporate environment shoulder length dreads are appropriate whether they are down or not. Yet, the problem isn’t just the hair, but who it seems to be undeniably connected to. A black man. I’ve seen white women in dreads and white men with dreads too but you tell a police officer a man had dreads and they will round up every black man in dreads that they can find if you don’t mention the guy was white they won’t look for them. It also is on the fact that racism so totally dominates our culture that we see our own Congress refusing to work with a black man in the White House solely because of his race, his policies are secondary. Remember this picture? The picture of Obama bending down so a kid can touch his hair? Before this, we never saw a President that had anything like ‘black hair’ Black hair is great, it’s beautiful and it’s not all straightened it can be chaotic and nappy but it’s still great. I myself wore a towel on my head to emulate the long straight hair I often saw on TV. I wanted long, flowing hair that would blow everywhere in the wind, but that was what I was shown to be beautiful.
Now let’s get into OH. Afro puffs, braids, afros, dreads. When the 1960s were over, a new kind of black empowerment came into being and a lot of that centered around our hair. These were the beginning of the liberation from typically white standards of hair care and beauty that often dominated our culture and still do today. They banned these hairstyles that are typically black however, ponytails weren’t prohibited and Afro puffs are simply a black variation of it. So, when you really ask me why they banned these hairstyles I can’t help but think that there were racist overtones to it because black students are most likely to wear these hairstyles. Dreads I believe were popularized in the greater culture by Bob Marley though I’m sure that many people were wearing them before. This school board has since reversed its decision but the fact remains that they wanted to take a cultures’ hairstyles and make them illegal, wrong, against the rules, taboo, forbidden. I’m sure that if anyone defends the school decision they must be under the impression that racism is over and don’t care how it manifests itself. It manifests itself in a number of ways including debating over hair. Including pointing out things common to that race and making it bigger than it is. It’s hair, something that we take with us every day that grows upward, but for gravity it falls down and can be nappy, curly, long, short, wavy, frizzy, you name it. WE have enough to deal with as black men, black women with our lives and now an OH school board has decided to throw hair in the mix. IN fact, I remember a teacher out of TN who said that if a man will sit between a woman’s legs to get his hair braided then he must be gay. This was a black woman which makes me think: WTF? (Jackie Chan Meme comes to mind) but the fact is that this kind of discrimination is nothing short of stupidity. I just can’t help but be confused, just utterly confused when the state of education is facing serious cuts because Republicans want nothing more than an inherited aristocracy where education is to the privileged and turn us into Elysium, why they are trying to ban a hairstyle that mostly black students will wear. Again, racism is over folks, let’s get over it. Or shall I say there they go again?
Her very tactful and wise reply says this: Hello Emmitt--I am the ‘black lady’ to which
you are referring. I’m sorry you don’t like my ethnic hair. And no I don’t have
cancer. I’m a non-smoking, 5’3, 121 lbs., 25 mile a week running, 37.5 year old
woman, and I’m in perfectly healthy physical condition.
I am very proud of my African-American ancestry which
includes my hair. For your edification: traditionally our hair doesn’t grow
downward. It grows upward. Many Black women use strong straightening agents in
order to achieve a more European grade of hair and that is their choice.
However in my case I don’t find it necessary. I’m very proud of who I am and
the standard of beauty I display. Women come in all shapes, sizes,
nationalities, and levels of beauty. Showing little girls that being comfortable
in the skin and HAIR God gave me is my contribution to society. Little girls
(and boys for that matter) need to see that what you look like isn’t a reason
to not achieve their goals.
Conforming to one standard isn’t what being American is
about and I hope you can embrace that.
Thank you for your comment and have a great weekend and
thank for watching.
For this Ms. Lee was fired. This is a hot mess of a
situation. Again she was fired for an unwritten policy that only existing in
the minds of the bosses. I am inclined to believe Lee’s chain of events because
of the simple fact that I have experienced racism before and if your boss wants
you gone they will find a way to pressure you to leave or make you show
yourself the door. I’ve seen people fired for simple things that just don’t
make sense and cite a policy that was just asinine or unwritten. The fact that
workers are treated like red headed stepchildren also looms in my mind through
this story. Even worse KTSB 3 administrator of the page LIKED the comment from
Vascou
But hair in the workplace is something that has been talked about mainly with the issue of dreads. I personally think in a corporate environment shoulder length dreads are appropriate whether they are down or not. Yet, the problem isn’t just the hair, but who it seems to be undeniably connected to. A black man. I’ve seen white women in dreads and white men with dreads too but you tell a police officer a man had dreads and they will round up every black man in dreads that they can find if you don’t mention the guy was white they won’t look for them. It also is on the fact that racism so totally dominates our culture that we see our own Congress refusing to work with a black man in the White House solely because of his race, his policies are secondary. Remember this picture? The picture of Obama bending down so a kid can touch his hair? Before this, we never saw a President that had anything like ‘black hair’ Black hair is great, it’s beautiful and it’s not all straightened it can be chaotic and nappy but it’s still great. I myself wore a towel on my head to emulate the long straight hair I often saw on TV. I wanted long, flowing hair that would blow everywhere in the wind, but that was what I was shown to be beautiful.
Now let’s get into OH. Afro puffs, braids, afros, dreads. When the 1960s were over, a new kind of black empowerment came into being and a lot of that centered around our hair. These were the beginning of the liberation from typically white standards of hair care and beauty that often dominated our culture and still do today. They banned these hairstyles that are typically black however, ponytails weren’t prohibited and Afro puffs are simply a black variation of it. So, when you really ask me why they banned these hairstyles I can’t help but think that there were racist overtones to it because black students are most likely to wear these hairstyles. Dreads I believe were popularized in the greater culture by Bob Marley though I’m sure that many people were wearing them before. This school board has since reversed its decision but the fact remains that they wanted to take a cultures’ hairstyles and make them illegal, wrong, against the rules, taboo, forbidden. I’m sure that if anyone defends the school decision they must be under the impression that racism is over and don’t care how it manifests itself. It manifests itself in a number of ways including debating over hair. Including pointing out things common to that race and making it bigger than it is. It’s hair, something that we take with us every day that grows upward, but for gravity it falls down and can be nappy, curly, long, short, wavy, frizzy, you name it. WE have enough to deal with as black men, black women with our lives and now an OH school board has decided to throw hair in the mix. IN fact, I remember a teacher out of TN who said that if a man will sit between a woman’s legs to get his hair braided then he must be gay. This was a black woman which makes me think: WTF? (Jackie Chan Meme comes to mind) but the fact is that this kind of discrimination is nothing short of stupidity. I just can’t help but be confused, just utterly confused when the state of education is facing serious cuts because Republicans want nothing more than an inherited aristocracy where education is to the privileged and turn us into Elysium, why they are trying to ban a hairstyle that mostly black students will wear. Again, racism is over folks, let’s get over it. Or shall I say there they go again?
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