Speaking of hair
I wanted to talk more about the argument I got in a couple of months ago with a couple of liberal white friends about Madison’s hair. Now this my side of things so take it with a grain of salt. I could be sorely misrepresenting my friends’ points; bear that in mind.
It was after a potluck at my house and I was saying that it is my understanding that you do not cut a little Black girl’s hair, that this is just Not Done. And I was saying this because we were talking about the care and maintenance of Black hair and one of my friend’s said, “Well, you can always cut it short.” And I said that no, that wasn’t really a solution because I didn’t want Madison to have to deal with people’s reactions to that.
So then we were talking about the friend I mentioned in the entry below who is Brazilian/Venezuelan and who has a Black daughter by birth. It took awhile for my friend to figure out how to do her daughter’s hair and while they were learning, Black women at the mall would frequently come up and admonish her.
My friends felt this was rude. I said they were doing my friend a favor because she (my friend) didn’t know how important proper hair care was in the Black community and she needed to know this.
I don’t think that any white person (including me, obviously) can really appreciate how important hair is in the Black community. We can kinda learn it, kinda parrot back what we hear but we cannot know the depth of feeling around hair. We just can’t. If a Black person tells me that I’m doing Madison’s hair wrong, I’m going to believe them, period.
This is when things got dicey. My friends (good liberals, seriously, they fight the good fight) said that first off, Madison was going to get a pass from people because I am white. (Bullshit.) And that also, Madison is half-white, too, and so why do I have to kowtow to the Black community. (Because she is African American even with her light skin and currently soft curls.)
Here is why (I have been told by a woman I used to work with and by J) you don’t cut little Black girl’s hair: By cutting her hair, you’re telling the world that she’s not worth the trouble it would take to do her hair.
Now I’m not talking about a child who is old enough to make up her mind about her hair — that’s different. If Madison is old enough that she is understanding the importance of hair, which she will likely really understand later than a child growing up in a black family, and she wants short hair then we’ll put that on the table. But I’m talking about when Madison is so little that I’m making the decisions. My friends brought up a story about an African American friend of ours who stood up to a Black woman about not cutting his own hair. She had said to him, “You need to represent us better than that.” He said, “I expect people to respect me for who I am and not for the way my hair looks.” But this is a grown man who has made that decision. I’m talking about a little girl who needs people to smile at her as she runs through the aisles at the grocery store or looks at picture books at the library.
Also, I think it’s totally different (obviously) when an African American parent makes a choice that goes against cultural assumptions about hair. I’m going blind here and I’d rather err on the side of caution.
I’m not sure why my friends didn’t get it; maybe I didn’t explain it well. (I was getting choked up at the end because, you know, failing my daughter is something that scares me an awful lot.) They said it’s the same thing as a (white) person who lets their child dye their hair blue with Manic Panic (something that would not turn heads in our crunchy granola world but might turn heads out of it). But it’s totally different. A white child is growing up with white privilege and it may be hard to think about privilege when we’re looking at a powerless child, but trust me, if Noah acted up at the store, he is unlikely to get the same dirty looks that a Black boy his same age would get. Noah has privilege. Madison (and god, I hate writing this) does not have that same privilege. Madison will be held to a higher standard and not just by white people. Understand, however, that Black people will hold her to a higher standard because they understand that their children (that my child) do not have privilege and if those children (if my child) don’t grow up with a grasp of that reality, they could be in danger.
And hair is part of this.
Listen, I love little girls with short hair but as long as I’m making decisions for Madison, I won’t cut it.
Because I’ve heard about the horrors of combing out a tender-headed child’s hair, if Madison’s hair required a lot of care, I’d likely look into locking it. But already we sit down and brush her hair every morning to get her used to sitting in my lap and having her hair lovingly cared for. We do this with a soft brush and we (Noah likes to help) fuss over her prettiness. So far she loves it and I hope by the time her hair is more work, she’ll at least associate that time with our adoration.
I brush Nat’s baby hair every day too, if only because it’s good for her scalp.
Your friends are wrong, but it’s also even more complicated because there is no “Black Community” hair standard. Trey and Guy (over at Dady, Papa and Me) just can’t win whatever they do to Emma’s hair–some Black person will disagree with their choice and some other one will swoon over how great it is.
We want to lock Nat’s hair–and she is dark and likely to have very tightly curled hair–and I know that some black people will think that’s super cool (one of her foster uncles has locks) and some will frown on the fact that we did such a radical thing (that has to be cut out) to our little girl.
So in some ways, maybe even though your friends are wrong about it being like dying white people hair blue, you should cut yourself some slack. No matter what you do there will be somebody who disapproves.
And an anecdote:
We have a close friend who’s African American and has an adopted African American daughter. Her daughter has very short, unstyled hair. My partner and I often go places with the daughter when we baby sit and once the secretary of my partner’s department remarked that white people can’t do black children’s hair. She thought the little girl was adopted by a white family (though not us) because of her hair. Soon after my partner told the little girl’s mother, they hit the salon. Now the little girl has permed, medium-length hair.
I appreciate your sensitivity on this issue. I think that, in general, those without power or privilege understand that the bar is set higher for them, even when it comes to things that some of us (particularly white liberals) think are not worth worrying about. And having a neat appearance is important, not sending your kids out looking any kind of way.
I’m one of those white liberals who doesn’t care that much about appearances–as long as my kids are in clean clothes, I don’t care if they match. My daughter has very long, very straight hair, and I let her run around with it loose and not up in ponytails or braids–and by the end of the day, it gets pretty tangled. And I’m comfortable with that choice, and usually she is too. I’ll do her hair if she asks me to, but if she doesn’t, I don’t press the point.
But I know that when I sent her to a daycare that was staffed by African American and Latina women, she would come home every single day with her hair in extremely tight braids. It was like the teachers at her school just couldn’t stand having her hair all out like that. I didn’t take it personally–I didn’t feel like they were thinking that I was a bad mother or something, because I didn’t take the time to braid her hair.
And I can imagine that, raising a biracial child, you will always feel more under the spotlight with that child, than you will with your white son. I agree with Shannon that sometimes, you will just have to let go of it, and recognize that you are doing the best that you can for her.
I do think it’s rude to admonish a stranger in public. Maybe not to simply advise a stranger, but context is important, tone is important, and willingness to back off is important.
True, a white person admonishing a black person is much worse than the other way around, but either way, it’s rude behavior.
Conversations like the one you had with your friends are really difficult for me. I get frustrated when people who have not ever raised a biracial child try to tell me what I should or should not do or feel, like I haven’t put any time or thought into my decisions.
Like you, I don’t have the luxury of just doing whatever the heck I want with my kid’s appearance, activities and (especially in my case) education. Disregarding the culture of the Chinese American community so that MY life is easier would be nothing more than me exerting my White privilege to the detriment of M (and her future sibling/s).
Until M is old enough to tell us what she wants, I don’t have the right to decide that she will go to art classes instead of math camp or soccer practice instead of Chinese school. I am just fortunate that I have the support of my husband and his family in deciding how best to help her integrate into the Chinese American community.
Even if my M ends up “passing,†she is still Chinese as much as she is white. I don’t worry about giving her access to white culture because she will be completely immersed in it practically all day, every day. We have to make sure that she feels comfortable in both communities, even though I expect that people will tell her through their words and actions that she should feel different no matter where she is.
No matter how many well-meaning white people tell me that I shouldn’t worry about these things, none of them have to answer to my daughter when she is older. I do have to answer to her, so I try to make my choices as thoughtfully and respectfully as possible.
Sorry this is so long, I tried to trackback it, but I can’t seem to make it work.
Dawn,
If it makes you feel any better, a black friend of mine didn’t really know what to do with her daughter’s hair either. Her mother didn’t live around her, so another black friend of ours came over to her house with products and did a demonstration.
BTW, do you have a copy of bell hook’s Happy to be Nappy?
Best!
Such a touching conversation, Dawn. I think that Madison will be always grateful and understand that you did the best by her that you could. But I understand and empathize with the struggle. It isn’t easy, and helping Madison to understand where she is and where she came from and what all that means is such an amazing example of how much love that little girl has. All of you are so lucky! So much love!
So interesting, this shows you how white I am, I never even considered this. I never thought a child with wild hair would literally appear “uncared for.”
I am having to confront daily how my child’s appearance makes me look as a mother. My 13 year old has purple hair. Plus, let’s just say her style of dress is pretty eclectic. I know sometimes I think of the cultural implications as far as class, but I never would have considered race in the same way.
Excellent post and discussion Dawn.
Can I side with your liberal white friends here (a little bit)? I think where you’re going a bit wrong is the assumption that there’s a monolithic Black view. There can’t be. I’m Indian, and I know there isn’t a monolithic Indian view (though there are views whose mean is different from the mean White view). You’re white, and you certainly know there’s no monlothic White view.
I’m actually often irritated by self-conscious liberal whites who want to be oh so culturally sensitive about my beliefs (and more specifically, when they are culturally sensitive about the beliefs they assume I have, rather than the ones I really have).
I’m an Indian (from Asia), an immigrant, and there are serious differences between the experience of a brown-skinned Indian and a brown-skinned Black (but, there are similarities, too).
bj
PS: not accusing you of being a self-conscious liberal white person — just talking about a kind of smug sensitivity that can exist out there.
Hey, I’m terrible, posting followups to my own comments. But, I read your previous post about Madison being mistaken for Latina or Asian Indian, and it reminded me of the blending of America. My own kids are 1/2 Jewish (husband is an ashkenazi jew — read blue eyes, pink skin, and brown hair. In Italy, they mistake him for a German, which drives him nuts). I am South Indian (read, skin a bit darker than Madison’s, curly dark hair, deep set brown eyes). My children are pale brown, and basically ethnically unidentifiable.
A classic view among half-Indians is that by emphasizing different features & makeup, they can fall into different racial categories. I suspect the same will be true of Madison, and that it is a social construct of America that we call biracial Blacks black (and a historical artificat of our racist history).
BTW, there’s a new report out on biracial americans (since census reports allowed this choice for the first time). I haven’t had a chance to read it, but it’ll be an interesting read.
bj
How interesting this post was. I am Black and feel a little comfortable speaking from the “Black point of view”. Of course there are always exceptions, but in general, African-Americans and Latinos are very aware of how our children look in public because so often we get the disapproving looks from people. I can remember over and over as a child my mother telling me not to go out in public because she don’t want people looking down their noses at us. Or if we were going to a store, following us around because being Black we are already suspect, but looking dirty (ie. poor) especially meant we needed to be watched. A kid dying their hair blue, would generally be looked at as an adolesant acting out. This in no way compares to a small child whose hair is unkept. Unfortunately society still pushes ethnic groups into catagories (why can’t black on black crime just be called murder like when a white person kills another white person?) and as a member of one of those groups I do cringe when I see white people look disapproving upon a Black person because I do feel as if I’m included in that disapproval even if I disapprove also. I could go on and on but this is long enough. Good for you for even recognizing the issue, proof enough that you won’t do your beautiful little girl wrong.
A great song related to this topic is: “I am not my hair,” by India.Arie. It speaks to a lot of the issues that have been raised here and that exist out there in the judgmental world.
My mulatto biological daughter always had beautiful soft curls and we did a number of things with them, but the oddest experience was when she was eight or nine. She was very beautiful and she had soft curls almost to her waist. We had moved the year before to a southern U.S. city where none of the kids at school would have anything to do with her (this was about seventeen years ago). The White kids saw her as “Black” and the African-American kids saw her as light-skinned with all that pretty hair. So the only two kids who would eat with her at lunch were a Korean girl and a Brazilian girl.
I had just read “The Bluest Eye” and thought maybe it would help if we cut her hair. It didn’t. But eventually, the next door neighbors (African-American) and one little European-American girl befriended her and other than that, she was pretty much alone. It was very hard to watch and eventually I turned down a really excellent employment opportunity in an even more racist community to go somewhere with a greater range of diversity in the population. It was like taking a big exhale for both of us and the absolutely right thing to do.
In any case, your post about hair brought it all back. And hair is still an issue for her at twenty-five, by the way. Just one more ramification of institutionalized oppression in the name of racism, unfortunately. Sigh.
Your thinking on this is really backward. Your friends are right. Your daughter is 50 percent white. Furthermore, and much more importantly, it wouldn’t matter if she were purple because she’s YOUR DAUGHTER! How about you fix her hair the way you see fit until she’s old enough to choose a style she likes?
Its very much a mark of privilege that so many people who ARENT Black can so easily dismiss how important an issue hair is for people of African descent. As recently as last monththe Baltimore police department attempted to forbid Blacks from wearing their hair in hairstyles suited to natural Black hair textures. I can only imagine what would happen if a city agency in Texas, for example, tried to pass a law banning blond dye jobs on employees…
Delux,
It’s very much the mark of someone interested in maintaining victim status to so easily bring up a totally unrelated issue. We’re talking about complete strangers coming up to a woman and dictating to her how her child’s hair should be worn.
You know, Dan, the thing is it’s not like it’s HARD for me to do my daughter’s hair correctly. It’s a matter of learning how to nourish and condition hair that’s curlier than my own and learn (still practicing!) to get a really straight, clean part. How hard is that? Why NOT take the trouble?
It’s my DAUGHTER who will pay for my decisions — not me.
It’s interesting that people seem to assume that I’m reluctantly forced to do terrible things to her hair instead of the reality, which is that I learned to braid and I learned how to work with my daughter at a very young age so that she could (happily) sit for the time it takes to do her hair. It’s not like it’s a huge sacrifice but it WOULD be a huge sacrifice (for her) if I rejected cultural concerns about her hair just because she’s my daughter and I can. I feel really blessed to have been given this time to nurture my daughter by caring for her hair everyday. Hones to god, I see it as a way to say “I love you” everyday. Now if she were white, I might not have taken that time because — like I said — I think short hair is pretty cute and short hair is culturally acceptable. And you know, I’d have missed out because caring for her hair is something I look forward to every morning.
Dawn, I’m impressed to hear how you have worked so hard to not only fix your kid’s hair, but make the effort to understand *why* it’s so important.
I guess we’ll leave the ashy leg patrol to another post! ;-P
Dawn,
It’s nice you care for your daughter in this way. I was not assuming you have to do terrible things to your child’s hair. But someone coming up to you and scolding you about her hair is wrong. Her hair is nobody’s business but yours and hers.
I stumbled across this blog through a search. But after reading it, I want to say kudos to all of those mothers with children of a different culture who feel that it is important to recognize that other culture as well. Dawn, thank you for respecting the African American culture enough ensure your daughter embraces it.
It did sadden me to read about the African American mother who permed/relaxed her daughters hair because of someone’s comment. To me that says that the NATURAL African American texture is not “good” enough, so it needs to be chemically straightened. But, that’s another topic. LOL!! Once again, kudos ladies!!!
Of course by my name you can already tell that I am Black. LOL. Like twana I came across this blog and I read threw Shannon’s story and I must say, I am happy to see such dedcation to raise your daughter. I come from a VERY diverse family full of white, west indian, hispanic etc you name it its in there! And honestly if its one thing that bothers me the most is seeing a biracial child whose parent does not take the time to learn how to take care of thier childs hair. So for that I am happy to see that you daughter is blessed with a mother that has such love. And as for that comment that white people can’t do black hair… that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, hair is hair either you know what your doing or you don’t. My mom is a beaution I mean shes fully black but she can do ANYONES hair black, African (and trust me there not the same texture), white, hispanic. And when I went with her to a hair show in Atlanta Georgia… guess what…. There was WHITE hair designers doing BLACK hair!! And they did pretty good might I add. So ANYONE can do hair if they just take the time as you are to learn.