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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 155
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - 07:44 pm: | 
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Just shocking. Black women are so beautiful
to me.
BLACK DENIAL IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Nearly all Dominican women straighten their hair, which experts say is a direct result of a historical learned rejection of all things black
By Frances Robles
frobles@miamiherald.com
SANTO DOMINGO -- Yara Matos sat still while long, shiny locks from China were fastened, bit by bit, to her coarse hair.
Not that Matos has anything against her natural curls, even though Dominicans call that pelo malo -- bad hair.
But a professional Dominican woman just should not have bad hair, she said. "If you're working in a bank, you don't want some barrio-looking hair. Straight hair looks elegant," the bank teller said. "It's not that as a person of color I want to look white. I want to look pretty."
And to many in the Dominican Republic, to look pretty is to look less black.
Dominican hairdressers are internationally known for the best hair-straightening techniques. Store shelves are lined with rows of skin whiteners, hair relaxers and extensions.
Racial identification here is thorny and complex, defined not so much by skin color but by the texture of your hair, the width of your nose and even the depth of your pocket. The richer, the "whiter." And, experts say, it is fueled by a rejection of anything black.
"I always associated black with ugly. I was too dark and didn't have nice hair," said Catherine de la Rosa, a dark-skinned Dominican-American college student spending a semester here. "With time passing, I see I'm not black. I'm Latina.
"At home in New York everyone speaks of color of skin. Here, it's not about skin color. It's culture."
The only country in the Americas to be freed from black colonial rule -- neighboring Haiti -- the Dominican Republic still shows signs of racial wounds more than 200 years later. Presidents historically encouraged Dominicans to embrace Spanish Catholic roots rather than African ancestry.
Here, as in much of Latin America -- the "one drop rule'' works in reverse: One drop of white blood allows even very dark-skinned people to be considered white.
LACK OF INTEREST
As black intellectuals here try to muster a movement to embrace the nation's African roots, they acknowledge that it has been a mostly fruitless cause. Black pride organizations such as Black Woman's Identity fizzled for lack of widespread interest. There was outcry in the media when the Brotherhood of the Congos of the Holy Spirit -- a community with roots in Africa -- was declared an oral patrimony of humanity by UNESCO. "There are many times that I think of just leaving this country because it's too hard," said Juan Rodríguez Acosta, curator of the Museum of the Dominican Man. Acosta, who is black, has pushed for the museum to include controversial exhibits that reflect many Dominicans' African background. "But then I think: Well if I don't stay here to change things, how will things ever change?"
A walk down city streets shows a country where blacks and dark-skinned people vastly outnumber whites, and most estimates say that 90 percent of Dominicans are black or of mixed race. Yet census figures say only 11 percent of the country's nine million people are black.
To many Dominicans, to be black is to be Haitian. So dark-skinned Dominicans tend to describe themselves as any of the dozen or so racial categories that date back hundreds of years -- Indian, burned Indian, dirty Indian, washed Indian, dark Indian, cinnamon, moreno or mulatto, but rarely negro.
The Dominican Republic is not the only nation with so many words to describe skin color. Asked in a 1976 census survey to describe their own complexions, Brazilians came up with 136 different terms, including café au lait , sunburned, morena, Malaysian woman, singed and "toasted."
"The Cuban black was told he was black. The Dominican black was told he was Indian," said Dominican historian Celsa Albert, who is black. "I am not Indian. That color does not exist. People used to tell me, 'You are not black.' If I am not black, then I guess there are no blacks anywhere, because I have curly hair and dark skin."
THE HISTORY
Using the word Indian to describe dark-skinned people is an attempt to distance Dominicans from any African roots, Albert and other experts said. She noted that it's not even historically accurate: The country's Taino Indians were virtually annihilated in the 1500s, shortly after Spanish colonizers arrived.
Researchers say the de-emphasizing of race in the Dominican Republic dates to the 1700s, when the sugar plantation economy collapsed and many slaves were freed and rose up in society.
Later came the rocky history with Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Haiti's slaves revolted against the French and in 1804 established their own nation. In 1822, Haitians took over the entire island, ruling the predominantly Hispanic Dominican Republic for 22 years.
To this day, the Dominican Republic celebrates its independence not from centuries-long colonizer Spain, but from Haiti.
"The problem is Haitians developed a policy of black-centrism and . . . Dominicans don't respond to that," said scholar Manuel Núñez, who is black. "Dominican is not a color of skin, like the Haitian."
Dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled from 1930 to 1961, strongly promoted anti-Haitian sentiments, and is blamed for creating the many racial categories that avoided the use of the word "black."
The practice continued under President Joaquín Balaguer, who often complained that Haitians were "darkening'' the country. In the 1990s, he was blamed for thwarting the presidential aspirations of leading black candidate José Francisco Peña Gómez by spreading rumors that he was actually Haitian.
"Under Trujillo, being black was the worst thing you could be," said Afro-Dominican poet Blas Jiménez. "Now we are Dominican, because we are not Haitian. We are something, because we are not that."
Jiménez remembers when he got his first passport, the clerk labeled him "Indian." He protested to the director of the agency.
"I remember the man saying, 'If he wants to be black, let him be black!' '' Jiménez said.
Resentment toward anything Haitian continues, as an estimated one million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, most working in the sugar and construction industries. Mass deportations often mistakenly include black Dominicans, and Haitians have been periodically lynched in mob violence. The government has been trying to deny citizenship and public education to the Dominican-born children of illegal Haitian migrants.
When migrant-rights activist Sonia Pierre won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2006, the government responded by trying to revoke her citizenship, saying she is actually Haitian.
"There's tremendous resistance to blackness -- black is something bad," said black feminist Sergia Galván. ''Black is associated with dark, illegal, ugly, clandestine things. There is a prototype of beauty here and a lot of social pressure. There are schools where braids and natural hair are prohibited."
Galván and a loosely knit group of women have protested European canons of beauty, once going so far as to rally outside a beauty pageant. She and other experts say it is now more common to see darker-skinned women in the contests -- but they never win.
CULTURE PULL
Several women said the cultural rejection of African looking hair is so strong that people often shout insults at women with natural curls.
"I cannot take the bus because people pull my hair and stick combs in it," said wavy haired performance artist Xiomara Fortuna. "They ask me if I just got out of prison. People just don't want that image to be seen."
The hours spent on hair extensions and painful chemical straightening treatments are actually an expression of nationalism, said Ginetta Candelario, who studies the complexities of Dominican race and beauty at Smith College in Massachusetts. And to some of the women who relax their hair, it's simply a way to have soft manageable hair in the Dominican Republic's stifling humidity.
"It's not self-hate," Candelario said. "Going through that is to love yourself a lot. That's someone saying, 'I am going to take care of me.' It's nationalist, it's affirmative and celebrating self."
Money, education, class -- and of course straight hair -- can make dark-skinned Dominicans be perceived as more "white," she said. Many black Dominicans here say they never knew they were black -- until they visited the United States.
"During the Trujillo regime, people who were dark skinned were rejected, so they created their own mechanism to fight it," said Ramona Hernández, Director of the Dominican Studies Institute at City College in New York. "When you ask, 'What are you?' they don't give you the answer you want . . . saying we don't want to deal with our blackness is simply what you want to hear."
Hernández, who has olive-toned skin and a long mane of hair she blows out straight, acknowledges she would "never, never, never'' go to a university meeting with her natural curls.
"That's a woman trying to look cute; I'm a sociologist," she said.
Asked if a black Dominican woman can be considered beautiful in her country, Hernández leapt to her feet.
"You should see how they come in here with their big asses!'' she said, shuffling across her office with her arms extended behind her back, simulating an enormous rear-end. "They come in here thinking they are all that, and I think, 'doesn't she know she's not really pretty?' "
Maria Elena Polanca is a black woman with the striking good looks. She said most Dominicans look at her with curiosity, as if a black woman being beautiful were something strange.
She spends her days promoting a hair straightener at La Sirena, a Santo Domingo department store that features an astonishing array of hair straightening products.
"Look, we have bad hair, bad. Nobody says 'curly.' It's bad," she said. "You can't go out like that. People will say, 'Look at that nest! Someone light a match!' ''
'IT WAS HURTFUL'
Purdue University professor Dawn Stinchcomb, who is African American, said that when she came here in 1999 to study African influences in literature, people insulted her in the street.
Waiters refused to serve her. People wouldn't help Stinchcomb with her research, saying if she wanted to study Africans, she'd have to go to Haiti.
"I had people on the streets . . . yell at me to get out of the sun because I was already black enough," she said. "It was hurtful. . . . I was raised in the South and thought I could handle any racial comment. I never before experienced anything like I did in the Dominican Republic.
"I don't have a problem when people who don't look like me say hurtful things. But when it's people who look just like me?"
"Silence is consent!"--Kola Boof
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Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2280
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - 09:25 pm: |
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It's not just there. It happens in Panama as well. I remember (I think I may have mentioned it here, but I'm not quite sure) talking to a guy I thought was African because of his dark skin and his accent (which didn't sound very spanish, but I guess his voice had something to do with that). He said that he isn't black at all. He was born in a Hispanic country, so he's Latino not black.
Dude was the first generation of his family born in Panama. His parents were JAMAICAN. Both parents. Born and raised.
I do wonder, though, if his parents taught him that. His parents having lived in Jamaica before he was born and not coming from "latinos" themselves, you'd think one of them would have clued him in that they were black. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1065
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - 11:02 pm: |
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"Purdue University professor Dawn Stinchcomb, who is African American, said that when she came here in 1999 to study African influences in literature, people insulted her in the street."
I've seen darker Dominicans than her when I was there, and I didn't see anyone insulting them. Of course, that doesn't mean that they aren't being insulted elsewhere.
From what I've seen of Dominicans personally, they are DUMB. It takes a Dominican bank teller about forty-five minutes to get the lead out of his ass and figure out where his left and right hand is so he can serve anyone, black or white or orange or whatever. Same for a waiter, a hotel clerk(they are so slow it took me the better of an hour for the clerk to sign me in--not because of prejudice, but because he is a fucking retard), a postal worker, etc. The women are extremely pretty but they don't have it on the ball mentally. I think their amazing stupidity has to do with the horrible heat, the amazing amounts of trash and the huge numbers of rats clogging their gutters(which I have seen first-hand), and above all, the fact that virtually none of them are educated, especially the elites(what clown would take a Dominican university seriously??), and the fact that Spain never really left, they merely hired out their agents/proxies to take care of the little island once the rulers supposedly "left" for Madrid. All in all, the DR is a sad fucking place, only good for sex tourism. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1066
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 5 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - 11:16 pm: |
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BTW, it's funny how that dumb beaner monkey bi/tch Hernandez (olive-skinned Dominicans are rare) talked about "black women" with their "big asses". Dominican women of all colors have the biggest asses in the world.
And f/uck Kola Boof because she secretly wishes she were a goddamn Ayrab, dumb fucking c u n t. |
Lil_ze
Veteran Poster
Username: Lil_ze
Post Number: 922
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 12:06 am: |
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well my first thought is-
STRAIGHTENING YOUR HAIR (if you are a black female) has NOTHING to do with being white.
our people made their hair straight LONG before our people came in to contact with the white man.
secondly-
DOMINICAN FEMALES ARE VERY FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
just because a bunch of BLACK people (who are today known as dominicans) have told themselves that they are something othe rthan "black", really means nothing.
ive been to spain.
if these dominicans think they are so "latin" send them to spain (where they live amongst TRUE spaniards).
we'll see how latin (spanish) they are.
bottom line (atleast for me)is-
WH0 CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dominican females are super FINE!!!!!!!!!!!
to hell with what the "dominicans" think.
for less than 1,500, i can go to the dominican republic and have sex with all af the YOUNG, SEXY, dominican females i want!!!!
HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Sabiana
Regular Poster
Username: Sabiana
Post Number: 120
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 01:09 am: |
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Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew.
It seems the pedifile has returned.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BTW, sexual exploitation of 15 year olds or younger is never funny. Sicko. |
Sabiana
Regular Poster
Username: Sabiana
Post Number: 122
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 01:30 am: |
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The State Department has Brazil on its watch list for human trafficking. The department said in its 2006 trafficking report: "Brazil is a source and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and for men trafficked for forced labor. Women and girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation within Brazil and to destinations in South America, the Caribbean, Western Europe, Japan, the U.S., and the Middle East.
"Approximately 70,000 Brazilians, mostly women, are engaged in prostitution in foreign countries; some are trafficking victims. Child sex tourism is a problem within the country, particularly in the resort areas and coastal cities of Brazil's northeast." The department put Brazil in its "Tier 2" category, meaning the country is not fully complying with minimum standards for fighting trafficking.
_________________________________________________
To be more exact, I find sex trafficking/sex slavery, and the men who exploit these young girls to be disgusting. I don't understand why more repercussions aren't taken, however, I do understand prostituition is one of the worlds oldest jobs, and as long a sex is a desire (naturally), there will always be prostitution. But honestly, It still makes me sick.
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Nels
Veteran Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 847
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 01:40 am: |
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Here, as in much of Latin America -- the "one drop rule'' works in reverse: One drop of white blood allows even very dark-skinned people to be considered white.
Laughable. |
Misty
Veteran Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 921
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 09:48 am: |
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To be more exact, I find sex trafficking/sex slavery, and the men who exploit these young girls to be disgusting. I don't understand why more repercussions aren't taken, however, I do understand prostituition is one of the worlds oldest jobs, and as long a sex is a desire (naturally), there will always be prostitution. But honestly, It still makes me sick.
the same thing is happening in nigeria...only worst and at a much higher rate but what's messed up is when they show it on the news they only show it happening to russian and asian women when its happening to black women (in this case from africa and brazil) 10 times worst. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2297
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 01:14 pm: |
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Well, absolutely nothing new or revealing about the article. But it is sad nevertheless.......... |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2298
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 01:19 pm: |
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"Look, we have bad hair, bad. Nobody says 'curly.' It's bad," she said. "You can't go out like that. People will say, 'Look at that nest! Someone light a match!"
Wow! Now that's hard core! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
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Brownbeauty123
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 2027
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 01:48 pm: |
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"the same thing is happening in nigeria...only worst and at a much higher rate but what's messed up is when they show it on the news they only show it happening to russian and asian women when its happening to black women (in this case from africa and brazil) 10 times worst."
Do you have any links? I'd like to read that. |
Americansista
Regular Poster
Username: Americansista
Post Number: 375
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 02:19 pm: |
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Read all about the series here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/index.html |
Renata
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Username: Renata
Post Number: 2286
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 02:26 pm: |
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"Look, we have bad hair, bad. Nobody says 'curly.' It's bad," she said. "You can't go out like that. People will say, 'Look at that nest! Someone light a match!"
Sounds like Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to me. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2299
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 03:08 pm: |
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"Sounds like Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to me."
Yep! There is no quarter of Blackdom on this planet that is exempt from the so-called "bad hair hate" syndrome. I know of a black woman who told me numerous times that she hated her hair. She said (verbatim); "Oooooohhhh I hate my hair!! Its so nappy and bad! I can't do anything with it. I hate it!". I saw her two days ago. She was sporting a mid-length blonde wig! Sad.....real sad.......
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1068
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 03:15 pm: |
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Renata: Sounds like Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to me.
Schakspir: It is. Just a whole lot of down home, pickaninny watermelon-eating shit. |
Urban_scribe
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Urban_scribe
Post Number: 447
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 03:55 pm: |
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From what I gather, the same way many (most?) Blacks in America believe a drop of Black (African) blood makes you Black, no matter how light/White-looking you may be, in Latin America they believe one drop of White (European) blood makes you White. Whiteness, they believe, is superior, it is desired; and they'll do anything to achieve that ideal look. So even when their skin is blue-black, if their hair is straight that's enough to make them non-Black. This also explains why you'll notice that the darkest of Latinos who come to the US refuse to learn/speak English, or pretend not to know it. They know that speaking Spanish is the one thing that separates and distinguishes them from US Blacks. Colorism, and all it entails, is not limited to the USofA's perspective. It is a worldwide sickness.
One thing's for sure, here in NYC, the Dominicans are putting Black salons out of business. Can't nobody straighten hair like a Dominican. I see Black women lined up and waiting for hours, I mean hours, to have their hair straightened at Dominican salons. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1070
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 05:38 pm: |
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Urban_Scribe: Can't nobody straighten hair like a Dominican. I see Black women lined up and waiting for hours, I mean hours, to have their hair straightened at Dominican salons.
Schakspir: How ironic. Latino coonishness aids and abets Yankee niggerisms. Birds of a feather!! |
Moonsigns
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Username: Moonsigns
Post Number: 1974
Registered: 07-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 06:33 pm: |
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Urban_scribe:
"Can't nobody straighten hair like a Dominican."
Moonsigns:
True. My older girls experiment with hairstyles. And whenever they want a straight style, the only stylist I will allow to touch their hair just happens to be Dominican. I have found that Dominicans can roller-set, "blow-out", and style the best.
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Misty
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Username: Misty
Post Number: 923
Registered: 02-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 06:45 pm: |
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Do you have any links? I'd like to read that.
Brownbeauty, i posted a topic about this a long time ago when i first started posting on this board......i'll try and find it but i had posted about 4 or 5 different links on it in that topic...im sure its in the archives now. i'll try and find it.
but if you want you can go on yahoo and type in nigerian women and sex trafficking and you will see tons of information on it. |
A_womon
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Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1602
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 07:00 pm: |
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the thing that always bothers me is, if a person of color straightens their hair, to some it means they hate who they are, yet if a white person gets a perm, and curls their hair kinky tight, nobody says the same of them. I don't understand this logic that says straightening hair equals racial hatred. |
A_womon
Veteran Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1603
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 07:07 pm: |
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the same can be said of skin bleaching/tanning. it's okay for white people to bake themselves black as an oreo cookie,they're just getting a "healthy" tan. but if a black opts to 'lighten' their skin a few shades, once again it's racial hatred. Why must there always be some extreme negative connotation to anything black people do? This type extreme negativity can be ascribed to other areas outside of appearance as well. |
Misty
Veteran Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 926
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 07:20 pm: |
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hey brownbeauty, here is the link to the topic i posted on african women and sex trafficking...i found it in the 2006 archives.
http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/11222/9968.html?1142038206 |
Renata
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Username: Renata
Post Number: 2292
Registered: 08-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 07:52 pm: |
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A_womon, I personally don't think all black people who relax their hair do it because they hate their hair.
Where I draw a line is between people who relax their hair sometimes for a change.....versus people who would never be seen with a kink and make sure their children's hair is straightened almost as soon as they can sit still in a chair longer than 30 minutes.
Do white people perm their hair? Sure. Do they bring their daughters in for a perm at age 3, 4, 5 and continue to bring them in every 6 to 8 weeks for the next 10 years? Hmmmm. Are they ridiculed by FAMILY and friends when they discontinue perming their hair? Hmmmm. |
Renata
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Username: Renata
Post Number: 2293
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 08:02 pm: |
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In Atlanta......relaxer touchups are 70.00 if you go somewhere CHEAP. (Buckhead salons charge 85 and up).
Now if you have two daughters and yourself to do this for......wow, what a chunk of change just for hair! |
Misty
Veteran Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 927
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 08:03 pm: |
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i use to do my own relaxer myself before i stopped wearing perms its quite easy to do so i dont understand why women go to the beauty shop for it |
Renata
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Username: Renata
Post Number: 2294
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 09:10 pm: |
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I used to get relaxers so infrequently that I didn't bother learning to do it. Also, I had tried once, and it burned my scalp without relaxing my hair, so I never tried that again. Along with that, I'm so used to dealing with natural hair, that I'm really not good with relaxed styles anyways.
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A_womon
Veteran Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1605
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 09:23 pm: |
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I hear you, renata,but doesn't the fact that white people aren't that concerned over who does what to their hair to the point of ridicule say more about us than them? So then my question remains and evolves into why does what some choose to do in our communities have to reflect on all, and why does it speak to race that we choose to straighten or not? |
Renata
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Username: Renata
Post Number: 2295
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 09:40 pm: |
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I personally don't think it reflects on us all, and I can't understand why some would paint us all with the same broad brush. Again, I personally don't feel that EVERY black person with relaxed hair hates their hair, but I do believe that a larger percentage of black people hate their hair than people of other races. And I'm not pointing you out exactly, because I don't know you well enough to say if this is so about you, but I do know people personally who will get all kinds of defensive about wearing a relaxer, and are the first to point and laugh when they see a woman in locs or an afro.
I would seriously change my point of view the day other people are laughed at and ridiculed because they wear their REAL hair. That we straighten our hair isn't the issue, that we do it with such VEHEMENCE is an issue...that we teach our children that it's NORMAL for them to be that concerned with changing their hair at such a young age is an issue.
And, EXACTLY, how concerned we are about our hair texture and the hair texture of friends and family DOES say more about us than them....hello!
I mean, COME ON, when you're 18 and you know how to better care for and style asian THROWAWAY than your own, something ain't right. When you're 18 and you have to buy someone else's hair because you're more USED TO touching their hair than your own, something ain't right. |
Renata
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Username: Renata
Post Number: 2296
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 09:43 pm: |
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BTW, LILI, bad news....I don't think those locs are going to work for me. I keep saying "patience, patience" as I'm twisting them....but I'm losing patience! I've had to retwist them at least twice. I may have to just go back to the afro.... |
A_womon
Veteran Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1608
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 10:06 pm: |
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I wouldn't say that most black women are using asian throw away but, by the way, a lot of natural styles like fros and locs are supplemented with some of that "asian throw away" too. |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2298
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 21, 2007 - 10:32 pm: |
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Relaxed texture is NOT our texture. I can't say this of all schools, so I'll just speak for the one I attended. I was one of maybe TWO girls in the school who wore natural hair, in an ALL BLACK SCHOOL. This is not good.
I'll put it this way....I've lived in the south all of my life, from Louisiana to Georgia. Jackson, MS is PREDOMINANTLY black.....and you can't find a stylist who does natural hair there. You can't find one in Mobile, AL.
And I wouldn't doubt that a lot of natural styles are supplemented with fake hair, but not at the same rate and not due (this is actually more important) to not wanting their hair to look natural.
Which brings up something else that I've mentioned before that I would really want to see: why don't we make OUR hair texture such a standard for us (in weaves and such) that WE can get paid selling OUR hair? Think about it....if we used Haitian hair or West African hair for our afros and locs, instead of trying to treat Asian hair or treating our hair to match their weaves.....we could probably get started to seeing more blacks owning businesses and large houses and being taken seriously because we have the money to send our children to medical schools, etc. Instead of JUST SHOPPING in all of these stores where we complain of being disrespected, we could OWN them.
As often as me and Lili cut our hair, and a lot of other women I'm sure.....
All of that money going to other races....and all of our hair being considered GARBAGE when it's cut, is not good. And it's only one example of how we don't value our own resources. Why the hell am I going to buy some asian woman's hair, and look at hair that looks like MY OWN and think it's garbage? That it's done isn't an issue...that it's done on such a WHOLESALE level is an issue.
I'm ranting now....... |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5923
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 22, 2007 - 04:00 am: |
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Interactive Map: African descendants in Latin America:
http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/multimedia/map.html
Source: http://www.africanpath.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=1122
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