Who gets to claim a painful past? Hardship and political discourse

I admit it. I watched some of the Republican National Convention. It might be surprising that even as a political scientist I am not necessarily drawn to doing such—for a number of reasons. Primarily, I find the pageantry of such events distracting and annoying and I also see them as more symbolic than substantive. However, I love rhetoric. For some reason, I find myself drawn to words and symbols and how they are used not only politically but also culturally. Needless to say, I was intrigued by the symbolic acts used by the various speakers. 

Primarily, I was intrigued by how some folk invoked the notion of a painful/difficult past in their narratives. These narratives of pain and hardship are designed, I guess, to show us that they are “regular” folk. Well, I’m not buying it.

Take Ann Romney’s claim for example, 

“We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know? We just didn't care. We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold-down ironing board in the kitchen. Those were very special days.” 

Paul Ryan said,

“Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life. And it transformed my Mom from a widow in grief to a small businesswoman whose happiness wasn't just in the past. Her work gave her hope. It made our family proud. And to this day, my Mom is my role model.”

Both assertions drew considerable applause. As I listened to the applause, I stopped and wondered whose “hardships” are celebrated? And who is even allowed to speak about their hardships?

Welfare Rights Movement: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/johnnie-tillmon-and-the-welfare-rights-movement

Could an average Black woman, a woman with the net wealth of $1.00 get up and speak of her hardships? Or are Black women only allowed to speak of hardships in terms of overcoming welfare and slavery (as was the case of Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's story of overcoming racism)?

I do believe that all of us at some point in time, regardless of social location, face challenges. I don’t take lightly the death of Ryan’s dad and the challenges this family more than likely faced in the aftermath. Neither do I negate Mrs. Ryan’s reinvention. What I find problematic is the use of these challenges to claim a form of “humble beginnings.” What rings false to me is the use of these stories to suggest that “I’m just like you.” No you are not. Both individuals were and are privileged and it is through this privilege that they were able to overcome these challenges. 

According to Ralph Vartabedian, Richard A. Serranoand Ken Bensinger, of the Los Angeles Time,

“Ryan, 42, was born into one of the most prominent families in Janesville, Wis., the son of a successful attorney and the grandson of the top federal prosecutor for the western region of the state. Ryan grew up in a big Colonial house on a wooded lot, and his extended clan includes investment managers, corporate executives and owners of major construction companies.”

Can Ryan claim that he did not benefit, directly or indirectly, from this privilege?

Regarding Ann Romney, she said,

“I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.

 When he was 15, dad came to America. In our country, he saw hope and an opportunity to escape from poverty. He moved to a small town in the great state of Michigan. There, he started a business — one he built himself, by the way.

He raised a family. And he became mayor of our town.” (emphasis added)

Did she and Mitt not benefit from the fact they were part of a political power elite?

Why is it that these privileged individuals can’t humbly claim their privilege? Why can’t they simply say that yes, we hit some rough patches, but because of our parents and our lineage, we were able to overcome. Yes, we also had to work hard to overcome, but because of access—to education, to wealth, to connections, etc. we made it. This is part of your story. 

I wanted to say to both individuals, “Just tell the whole truth.” Please don’t tell me half of a story and then expect me to applaud and think that you are just like me. Also, please don’t use your privilege to mute others’ stories of hardship. 

As I listened to Paul Ryan’s story of his mom riding the bus, the story of my grandmother and countless other Black women came to mind. First, when is riding the bus in and of itself a hardship? Indeed doing such is a hardship from many poor Black women or those who live in particularly poor communities. Yet, these folks get no applause.

In 1991, seventeen year old Cynthia Wiggins was killed because a private mall did not allow public transportation from the inner-city onto its property.

“According to regional transit officials, the mall's developers refused to allow it on their property, which meant anyone coming from central Buffalo had to disembark 300 yards away, on the other side of seven-lane Walden Avenue, a highway feeding into the New York State Thruway without a sidewalk or crossing. Then, just before Christmas, a young, single mother from Buffalo was killed by a dump truck as she walked from the No. 6 bus stop to her job at the mall.”

I have a student, who often came to class with a candy bar. I asked her, “why are you always eating candy bars?” She replied, “It’s what I can afford. When I don’t have money this is what I eat.” Tuna fish would have been a luxury to her. 

Is there room on the platform for these stories? If not, we have to ask why. 

These stories of these women are left out of this narrative. There are also other elements left out the Ryan and Romney’s narratives. For one, Mrs. Romney does not explain how they overcame these hardships in their marriage? Let’s stop a moment and unpack the spoken and the unspoken. 

We have to differentiate choice from suffering. I’m not suggesting that our choices cannot lead to suffering. Because God knows that I’ve made some choices that have led to suffering. But in deed there is a difference. I admit that I know nothing about the Romney’s except what Ann told “us” the night of her speech. She admitted that she and Mitt were of two different faiths and that they choose to get married young. Reading between the lines, they choose to get married without the blessings of their parents. Choice! Both grew up in wealthy families, yet opted to leave that behind (temporarily) and build a life together. Choice! Mitt had completed his undergraduate degree and was working on his law and business degrees. Choice, and access! Additionally, left out of the narrative is that at least one family allowed them back into the fold and that they were financially taken care of—there goes the days of eating tuna. Regardless of how they walked away from their parents’ money, they still had privilege. So Ann, yes you had to eat tuna, but you had a choice.

Some of us don’t have that choice. We are not born into privilege.

My 80 plus year old grandmother takes the bus to work (don’t ask why she still works at her age). In fact, she takes the bus and the train. My grandmother tells a story of working from about the age of eight. Hard labor, working on a plantation is what allowed her to survive. She had NO CHOICE. This is a woman who was motherless at the age of three and found a way, she and my grandfather, to successfully raise two daughters, three grand children and six great-grand children; all of this with little formal education. Wait, here’s your cue to applaud her sacrifices. Very few people will hear her story, because women like her tend to be muted because their stories challenge race, gender, and class hierarchies.

What about the mother of the 12 year old boy who died from complication of an abscessed tooth.  The problem was not necessarily the tooth; it was that he lacked access to dental insurance. Does she get to tell her story?

This is not about whose story is worse? I’m more concerned about who gets to tell their story and how stories are used, politically, to include or exclude some of us. When Black women tell their stories of hardship, we are told to be quiet and stop acting angry. There is no legitimacy afforded to us. 

Will we be invited to speak at any of these conventions? Will anyone listen to us or will they attempt to silence us with their stares and comments that “it’s bad, but it could be worse?” Is there space to hear Black women’s stories of hardship?

So, I’m Angry? The better question is why are you scared?

I want you to take a careful look at the above picture and tell me what you see. Don’t just give it a sweeping glance, take your time and look at it. This is important for the story that I’m about to weave. 

“Dangerous Linda” in response to a blog post I wrote said, 

“Are you sure you're not an angry woman? You kind of seem like one to me. Just an observation, for whatever that's worth to you...”

After Gabriel Douglass won the gold medal in the all-around women’s gymnastics competition, Bob Costas (NBC commentator) said,

“You know, it's a happy measure of how far we've come that it doesn't seem all that remarkable, but still it's noteworthy, Gabby Douglas is, as it happens, the first African-American to win the women's all-around in gymnastics. The barriers have long since been down, but sometimes there can be an imaginary barrier, based on how one might see oneself.”

How do we begin to interpret the picture celebrating friendships and victory? How do we begin to interpret a White woman, who has never met me, telling me and indeed insisting that she knows that I am angry? How do we interpret Costas’ statement?

Let’s take the picture first. On their Facebook page, Girls on the Run International posted the above picture. Its status update read,

"We love this image of the USA Gymnastics Women's team holding hands after they won the gold in the Women's Team final yesterday in London. This image reminds us of how so many Girls on the Run cross the finish line holding hands with their teammates. The women of the gymnastics team are an example to us all, not just because they won the gold, but because of the friendship and teamwork they have shown the world. They are truly inspiring!"

Girls on the Run characterizes itself as an inclusive, multicultural program designed to foster a “world where every girl knows and activates her limitless potential and is free to boldly pursue her dreams.” The image used to celebrate the friendships fostered between girls seems to belie, consciously or unconsciously, their commitment to multiculturalism. The women’s team, not including alternates, comprise of five young women. In the foreground of the picture, brightly lit, are four girls with tightly clasped hands celebrating their victory. Missing is Gabby. In the background, off to the side, with her back to the camera stands Gabby. Her smile, often described as electric and engaging, is now invisible to the viewing public. Her very African features are removed from sight. In this picture “depicting” the team we see Gabby but yet we do not see Gabby. In a picture that depicts friendships, Gabby is excluded from the clasp. What does this suggest about interracial friendships—Gabby is the one African American young woman on the team? What narrative is conveyed in separating Gabby from whiteness?

Depicting Black women in this manner serves a larger political project—whether or not the person using the photograph is consciously or unconsciously engaging in this project.  In the words of Kres and Van Leeuween "Like linguistic structures, visual structures point to particular interpretations of experience and forms of social interactions "(Kress and Van Leeuween 1996, p.2). Indeed pictures speak a thousand words. They tell us who gets to be designated as pretty, worthwhile, and who is included in our understanding of community. One reading of the above picture suggests that Gabby is an outsider—she is not a part of the larger gymnastics world. 

Now, to “Dangerous Linda”. Dangerous Linda, by deploying a historical tactic often used to silence Black woman, was attempting to delegitimize my claims. In her attempt to construct me as “angry”,  Dangerous Linda employed two narratives—one of irrationality and one of morality. The intersection of irrationality and morality with race and gender tends to produce a Black woman who is “senseless” and incapable of moving beyond her basic childlike instincts. Think of the child who is throwing a temper tantrum. As she indicated I was incapable, even if angry, to engage in critical thought. Implied is that I did not have the intellectual capability, regardless of the fact that I hold a Ph.D., to offer a critique of American society in general and White women’s tactic understanding of racial hierarchies. In my response, I asked why was such a categorization necessary, why not comment on the substance of the argument made in the post? The response once again informed me that I was angry.

Bob Costas, what was he attempting to do? Is he suggesting that there is a level playing field and that all Black girls have access to gymnastics and the possibility of winning gold? Costas deploys the rhetoric of post-racialism, which is an ideology that suggests that racial differences are no longer salient. It is part of the color-blind rhetoric that actually relies on racialized hierarchies. He seeks to minimize and in fact erase racism. In his comments, Costas seems to be implying that Black women and Blacks in general face only the psychological barriers that they impose on themselves. He sits on the outside telling Black folk that their problem is internal. Bob Costas, while recognizing the triumph of Gabby also engages in a similar tactic as used by Dangerous Linda and to some extent the image used by Girls on Run International. He too delegitimizes the voices of Black women by suggesting that barriers, while he was primarily referring to racialized barriers, I’m also including gender, class and sexuality barriers, no longer exist. Thus, Black women cannot make the claim that many of the inequalities they confront on a daily basis springs from these barriers. Now it is about individual desire and individual ability. Thus, if you fail to win the gold, the problem rest solely at your feet. Society is now free of its responsibilities to address inequalities—in terms of access to sports, education, health, etc. I wanted to recommend that Mr. Costa’s read Souls of Black Folk, Invisible Man, Native Son and any of the speeches penned by Maria Stewart, among countless other works by Black men and women living in the U.S. 

Girls on the Run International, Dangerous Linda and Bob Costas are all engaging in the same practice—marginalizing the voices of Black women. Choosing to speak for us and to depict us in a way where we are there, but our existence is only seen and understood via their lens. These individuals don’t seem to understand that they are looking at the world via cracked lenses; lenses that hold the scars of race, class, gender and sexuality hierarchies. They do not own their privilege in defining how society sees or not sees Black women. 

Black women are being marginalized. Yet when we take the time to challenge our marginalization by publicly speaking some attempt to discredit us. Why? What is the politics behind such actions? Why are they afraid of Black women speaking on their behalf? 

These rhetorical strategies used by Girls Run International, Dangerous Linda, and Bob Costas limit Black women’s quest for social justice. They also mask White insecurities. Turning the spotlight on Black women as the source of the problem or ignoring them all together allows some to easily ignore environment, culture, racism, threats, and discrimination and their impact on the daily lives of Black women. What might we learn if the spotlight was turned in the other direction? Why is there such resistance to and fear against turning to the spotlight to look at White behaviors?

Black Women’s Public Cries: Mothering, Death and Activism

Trayvon Martin

I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down to write this piece; each time I walk away thinking I’m not ready for this. The pain I feel about the loss of our children leaves me with such grief that I literally become immobile. After the recent shootings in Aurora, CO I thought about dusting this piece off—I wrote this piece on Mother’s day 2012. However, I was still crippled. It’s taken me a few days to comprehend the depth of my feelings. I realized that I was mourning. I was mourning in a way that I’ve never mourned. It seems that every since the brutal killing of Trayvon Martin, I’ve been in mourning for the children of my community.

Trayvon Martin’s murder touched me in a way that I can’t always explain. It is only upon reflecting on my feelings with an older, and much wiser, woman was I able to name the fact that I was in mourning for this child. A child I never met. Yes, I was compelled by the nature of his death. But for me it was something much deeper. It was as though I had lost my child.

As the weeks progressed and we learned more about Martin’s murder, I made a conscious decision not to listen to any of the rhetoric of the case. Although I made this decision, I continued to think about this “case”. Particularly, I kept thinking, If this were my child, how would I respond? Would I become an activist and mourn publicly, or would I mourn only in private? Then I started thinking of all of those Black women who lost their children to colonialism, the institution of slavery, and the institutionalization of racism and its correlate poverty. Then I stopped and asked myself, what would society look like if all these Black mothers choose to challenge the systems that robbed them of their children? Also, what would society look like if all of us who “other-mother”, as I found myself doing for Trayvon Martin, also publicly cried out?

 What would a global social movement, in protest against the brutal and senseless killing of our children, look like?

There is no way for me to chart the loss, broadly defined, of our children at both the national and global levels. But consider the following:

• In 2008, Blacks, [in the U.S] constituted 17 percent of the youth population (10-17). They constituted:

o   31 percent of all juvenile arrests.

o   26 percent of all juvenile arrests for drug abuse violations.

o   52 percent of all juvenile arrests for violent offenses.

o   58 percent of all juveniles sent to adult prisons. 

• African Americans were overrepresented among police shooting victims in every city the publications [ColorLines] investigated. The contrast was particularly noticeable in New York, San Diego and Las Vegas. In each of these cities, the percentage of black people killed by police was at least double that of their share of the city’s total population. 

The U.N.  32 children under 10 among the dead in Syria

•   More than 400 children in Syria have been killed since the start of the uprising last March, according to human rights activists.  .

•   In 2008, 65,646 children age 0-9 died of AIDS in South Africa. 

In his speech to the National Urban League, President Obama stated, "Every day and a half the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater" in Aurora, Colorado. Our children are dying!

These are somebody’s children. They have been removed from our communities as a result of structural violence—poverty, lack of health care, lack of education, and racism. We will probably never see the faces of their mothers. We’ll probably never see their tears. Many of them will remain nameless and unknown to us. Hopefully they will be comforted by a loved one. Hopefully, some stranger will walk by and bless them with a smile. 

Over time, many of us will forget their stories. As the media spotlight another story, the cries of these mothers will move to the recesses of our minds. We’ll move on to worry about what’s for dinner, how to make the next car payment, and the everyday challenges we face. Sometimes the tragedy is just too much for us to bear and we need a reprieve—we need to avert our eyes. We leave these mothers to mourn on their own. But, what if there is an alternative? What if we turn our grief into action?

Mamie Till Bradley, Emett Till's mother, crying over Emett's coffin

 What if we moved the conversation away from gun access (a valuable and much needed dialogue) to include poverty and other forms of oppressive structures? How might this help to form a movement that’s inclusive of mothers and other-mothers? We cannot turn our heads in the face of such violence. We need to (re)claim our communities. We cannot sit back and wait for others to come in and do it for us. They will fill our ears with rhetoric and no action. Our fore-mothers, such as Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, provide us with a platform to build a movement. We need to write, we need to sing, sing like Nina Simone so that the world can hear our pain, we need to influence and make policies—in both the public and private sectors, we need to occupy the streets. We need to throw open our coffins and show the world the brutality our children suffered. We need our version of MADD. We need a mother’s day to honor these women. Such a day is needed to let them know that we recognize their pain. We need a social movement—one that addresses the multiple causes that encourage and perpetuate the deaths of our children. Let's turn our grief into activism.

We just have to wait...

I'm trying to be patient with myself concerning the shootings in Colorado. Friday is my typical day to blog. Given the unfolding story of the shooting in Colorado I don't think that its appropriate. I  want  to write about this as it resonates deep in my spirit. I want to write a post that  is respectful and nonjudgmental. My desire is that my words and thoughts aren't simply a response to the shock of the event.  I'll post next week.

I don’t see you as a Black Woman and other White women’s ramblings

A couple years ago I guest lectured for a colleague. Her class, a master’s level course, was discussing diversity and corporate America. I was asked to speak on my experiences as a woman of color in a majority White institution. I walked in and wanted to declare “yes indeed, I’m live and in color.” I sure did bring color to the room. But at this stage of my career, I’m, relatively speaking, accustom to being the “only one”. This is something that I live with, although I’m never really accepting of it—but that’s a totally different post. 

I did the standard introduction--this is who I am, here are my credentials, etc. Then I spoke to my experiences of disrupting racialized and gendered spaces. I told these MBA perspective students of my experiences of being stopped when entering campus. I’m sometimes stopped, although my parking decal is visibly displayed, and asked to identify which building I’m going to. I’m often asked, in a discreet manner, if I’m faculty. When I respond that I am, I sometimes hear “you look so young”. I don’t look that young. But I accept the flattery. My stop and ask experiences occur in the same library where some personnel request that students prove that they are actually students. 

As I speak, I see the look of discomfort on some faces. After all, these stories can’t be true. Some students discreetly look away from me. Some boldly stare me down waiting for their opportunity to show me how my experiences are not the result of race-gendered structures. One young man said to me that maybe I’m stopped as a result of the car I drive. With a smile I replied “I drive a Mitsubishi Outlander. I’m not rolling up in here on 20-inch rims blasting Snoop.” Over time, I’ve learn that humor is to racism was sugar is to medicine. Just a smile makes the bitter pill of racism go down (caution, this only works in some circumstances). One student asked if I’d considered that I was stopped as I result of my style of dress. “Oh, they can tell how I’m dressed as I sit behind the wheel?” was my response. But this is not what stirred my ire. 

What stirred my ire was the young White woman who declared “Oh, I don’t see you as a Black woman. I just see an intelligent woman.” This was meant as a compliment. However, I’m never sure how I’m expected to respond after such a declaration. Am I supposed to say good for you that somehow you have been able to evolve where race is no longer something you see? How does a 30-something-year old woman who has lived her entire life as Black respond to such a statement? 

 I responded by saying “You’re not going to like my response.” All the while with a genuine smile on my face. I then explained to her how this statement, in essence, erases me and fails to see me for who and what I am. I also asked her if she ever stopped to think how I wanted to be seen. For those who at this point might think that I’m bitter or the so-called angry stereotypical Black woman—I’m not. Just like my Italian-American neighbors I want to celebrate who and what I am. They wave flags, speak in Italian, name their children in so-called typical Italian names, yet rarely do I ever hear someone condemn them for doing such. So why can’t I be Black? I AM A BLACK WOMAN. This means something to me. And equally, it means something to others in the world who use my race to tell me how and what I should be in society.

I guess that I simply don’t have the privilege to define myself. Instead, I must be seen as the “intelligent” woman—as though my intelligence can be determined by simply looking at me. Or even worse, blackness and intelligence can't co-exist. So I'm required to pick one and only one--Blackness or intelligence. I also asked her why was it important to her not to see me as a Black woman and how this might result from her experiences while having nothing to do with Black women? I received a blank stare and then a tucking of the head. In an instant, I morphed from the intelligent Black woman to the evil Black woman because I resisted someone’s definition of me. 

Black women don’t seem to be permitted to exist in the imagination or even the social reality of some white women. Consider the recent article that appeared in a Utah Magazine titled “Utah Magazine Celebrates Women Of Color.” All of the women on the cover appear white. The picture under the heading displayed seven women all dressed in bright colored clothing. According to Taylor, who reported on the response to this piece,

“Our good friends at Gawker caught up with Bennett and she was completely clueless as to what the term means to the rest of the world. “That was not intended as an ethnic comment,” Bennett told Gawker when they called to ask her if she was familiar with the traditional understanding of the adjectival phrase in question. “It was just clever wordplay. It was that women add color, and there’s more than one meaning of color.” (emphasis added)

Vanity Fair, in 2010, show-cased rising stars on its cover. Amanda Seyfried, one of the stars gracing the cover, was interviewed on the View. Whoopie Goldberg asked her about the absence of persons of color on the cover and why she was surprised by someone asking her to reflect on this absence. She replied, “I hadn’t thought about it. I mean I hadn’t seen it….It’s true, but there is a lot of different hair color.” The conversation quickly turned to the wonderful women of color who had been nominated for Oscars and her other acting roles. Wow! There are diverse hair colors. Does this compensate for the marked absence of women of color? As I watched this, and even years later I am saddened, angered, and dismayed. I feel the same way after reading Bennet’s display and her claim that there’s more than one meaning of color. Even if Bennet didn't know of the politics of this naming process, there was no one at the magazine who knew differently? Theoretically I understand the absence of women who look like me from our cultural representations. However, psychologically it is painful to comprehend. 

The students, Bennett and Seyfried all seem clueless; clueless about their privilege and clueless about others’ experiences with race, class and gender. They are unaware of the struggles Black women, and women of color more generally, encounter in naming themselves. They are unaware of the politics of a self actualization. Not to belabor you with a history lesson, but the term woman of color originated in 1977. Yet, in 2012 some aren’t even aware of the term and the politics of this naming process. This speaks to a larger project that seeks to erase Black women from our social imagination. 

Planned Parenthood

Such erasure is not only taking place in the social realm, but it is also occurring in the realm of politics. Since the passage of the welfare reform legislation in 1996 do we speak of Black women in our policy discussions? Think about it. There is an alleged circle of sistas in the Obama administration. I dare you to name five of them without doing a Google search. Michele Obama has become a darling among some, is it because she is a Black woman or is it because she is a fashion icon that allows people not to see her raced body? Where are the Black women who publicly challenge our foreign policies? How are they positioned in the main-stream media? Where are the Black women in the discussion on reproductive health? Many critiqued the recent House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the birth control rule for its representation of patriarchy—the hearing was dominated by men. Very few analyzed this hearing via a lens of race, gender, and class and their intersections. Where were the women of color at the hearing?

Not seeing Black women in our social and political realms and even in our imaginations (as in the case of the TV show Girls) is a telling story. This is part of a larger political and social movement to erase Blackness in the hopes that we “can all just get along”. The erasure of Black women speaks to the dark-side of multiculturalism; one that strives to encourage us not to see differences among and between groups. Seeing differences is not the problem. The problem is that people use differences to oppress. Multicultural teachings and ideals have not resulted in the dismantling of the oppressions. Instead, it has rendered the material consequences of differences invisible. Multiculturalism gives those in power the tools to ignore some segments of our community with claims such as I don’t see you as a Black woman. This claim suggests that I’m just like you. No I’m not. Race has real consequences. One only has to look at the rate of HIV infection among Black women—and no, this is not the result of higher promiscuity among this group or the actions of men on the down low. One only has to consider the rates of breast cancer and resulting deaths among Black women to realize that race and its intersection with class and gender still matter. One only has to walk the halls of academia to realize that, yes, race matters.

Black women are the canaries in the mine. We are disappearing and no one seems to notice. If we were ever in need of a Black feminist movement, the time is now.

Sexuality and Hair: The Day I became unwomanly and a butch

The first time I cut my hair, particularly short; I was about 16 years old. This was before the new “natural hair” trend that we are currently experiencing. Back then to be that young and bold (in the eyes of some) was truly a radical act. I went against what most thought as the proper performance of a girl/young woman. For me, it was one of the most liberating things, to date, that I’d ever done. I didn’t do it as an act of defiance to the scripts of womanhood. I did it because it felt right. It felt like me. It was freeing. 

Between the ages of 16 and 25 I experimented with many hair styles. You name it I tried it—braids, weaves, and naturals. My hair changed color depending on my mood. I had fun with my hair—for the most part. However, there was one thing that stayed constant during that time. I was never really in love with hair. I’m not a particularly fussy person and neither am I one to be moved by trends. However, I do know what I like and what I don’t. Hair is not high on my like list. 

Chrisette Michele

Around my 20^th birthday (sometime in the early 1990s) I went to the barbershop on Rutland Road in Brooklyn, NY. There was a barber in this shop who had the reputation of being excellent. I sat in his chair, after waiting for what felt like hours, and told him that I wanted a tight fade. He gave me one of the best fades I’ve ever had. Like clockwork, I would show up for my edge up and trim. One morning as I positioned myself in his chair an older man mumbled, just loudly enough for me to hear, “a woman should never do that to herself.” The barber and I both ignored him. Not being satisfied at the lack of response, he said louder “that’s just not right and it ain’t natural.” My barber stopped, looked at him and replied, “I saw her with long her and I’ve cut her hair this short. To me she’s even more beautiful now.” Interestingly when I wore a head full of weave and braids no one was ever so bold to say to my face that it was “unnatural”.  

Little did I know that cutting my hair and wearing a fade would illicit such responses. Some men were so bold as to ask me if I was a “butch”. My cousins were questioned about my sexuality. The only thing that changed was the length of my hair. Unbeknownst to me was that my hair sent messages about my sexuality. I did not know that long hair = heterosexuality. 

Walking the streets in NY became increasingly more challenging. Prior to my fade my non-response to cat calls resulted in me being cussed and accused of thinking that I’m better than others. In my post long, permed hair era, my refusal to respond to such calls resulted in more than who the “fuck do you think you are!” to “ain’t nobody want you, you fucking butch!” I was told how I needed some “good stiff dick” to rescue me from my perceived homosexuality.

What I did not understand was how in the time it took to cut my hair my sexuality had changed. Beyond exposing how hair is valued in society, my experience taught me about the functioning of society and what academia eventually taught me was marginalization. The questioning of my sexuality, vis-à-vis the length of my hair, reflects how we define the boundaries of our community. It speaks to how we determine who is allowed in and what allows them in. So I could pass and be accepted into the community simply by wearing a wig. That simple act would deflect some of the street harassment I faced.

But it wasn’t just gendered-sexed street harassment that I encountered. I also encountered censorship from some older Black women in the community. In a short period of time, I became the damaged Black woman. Some would ask I if was sick. It never entered their imagination that someone would willingly cut their hair as short as I wore mine at times. When I would respond that I’m not sick, eyebrows would raise ever so slightly. Some women were polite enough to let that be the extent of the reproach and questioning. Others would be bold enough to ask, “why would you choose to wear your hair that way?” Some quoted the Bible to me about how my hair was my crowning glory and how it was against the teachings of God for a woman to deface herself by cutting her hair. In my mind I would think, I didn’t break any of the Commandments so there is still hope for me to make it into the Kingdom. In the meantime, I just couldn’t be accepted among my people. 

How has your hair been used as acceptance or denial into particular communities?