Internalizing Racism
13Jul2006 Filed under: Race Author: DawnIn April, Susan L. Taylor, the iconic editorial director of Essence magazine, canceled a campus speech when she discovered the college forbids its students to wear “unusual” hairstyles  including braids, which are Taylor’s signature look. This was noteworthy because the college was Hampton University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black campuses. Then it was discovered that Black Enterprise magazine had a similar ban for student interns.
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What’s troubling is that, by being forced to change their hair, black people once again are being forced to shoulder the burden of proof: We’re not as fearsome as we look. It’s up to us to mitigate our dark skin and ethnic features by framing them with hair that’s as neat and unethnic as possible.
Read it all here.
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About Me
I have two kids and a delightfully odd husband, Brett. My children are Noah (born to us in 1997) and Madison (born to her first mom, Pennie, in 2004 and brought to our family through a domestic, open adoption). They are my inspiration and also the reason I don't get more done around here.
I'm a writer and sometimes I get published, which is a nice thing. I write for joy, I write for money and when I'm very lucky, both things happen at the same time. My work appears in national publications including Yoga Journal, Disney's Family.com, Utne, Wondertime, Brain Child and Salon. Currently I am working on a book about my daughter's adoption and seeking representation for the proposal. I also own Smart Cookie Communications with my husband.
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Lilian
July 13th, 2006 at 3:17 am
Thanks for the link Dawn, excellent article. One of the (children’s) books I’m analyzing in my dissertation is about a Black girl (Nina Bonita by Ana Maria Machado). I’m focusing on the book’s translation from Portuguese into Spanish and then into English (a bit problematic because references to “peeing” and “pooping” were erased) but hair is one of the strong visual elements of the picture book (which is more present in the Portuguese text which refers to the girl’s “ribbon bows”).
Anyway, all of this to say that I’m very interested in references to Black hair and have followed quite closely the past troubles with the picture book _Nappy Hair_. I also love bell hooks’ picture book Happy to be Nappy.