For Anyone Who's Ever Been Caught Up in the Natural vs Relaxed Debate

Soliel185

New Member
I read this today - and it just made such perfect sense yet was so simple. I know this is an issue that many of us struggle with internally, or externally with family, friends, and significant others so I thought I'd share.

This is from the Stereohyped Blog.

Carolivia Herron wrote the children’s book Nappy Hair expecting a little bit of controversy. You see, the lead character, a child named Brenda, had “the nappiest, fuzziest, the most screwed up, squeezed up, knotted hair.” Brenda was special. Unique. Herron figured parents might not like that she was putting this young character on a pedestal.
“I was claiming uniqueness for my character,” Herron told Stereohyped, “rather than claiming that this child represented African American people as a whole.”
But the controversy Herron got was of an entirely different sort. In 1998, a white elementary school teacher in the predominately black and Hispanic Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, infuriated parents after she read the book to her class and sent students home with copies. They considered Nappy Hair to be a racial slur. The administration eventually backed the book and the teacher’s decision to read it in class, but it was too late. The teacher had to request a transfer because she feared for her safety.
The funny thing is, Herron wrote Nappy Hair as a celebration of traditional call and response in African American culture, not as a political statement about African American hair or as a self-esteem booster for young girls. The story of Brenda and her “nappy hair” was one passed down to her from her Uncle Richard, and she knew that it was one that would get people’s attention.
“I wanted something that was very important,” she said. “The topic is important, of course, even though the purpose [of the book] was to show art and African American art. I thought, here’s something that’s important to most African American people. It’s something that will get other people’s attention.”
That it did. But while her book has garnered a lot of negative attention for the controversial word in the title, she has received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from young people, parents, and educators. That her book can be used as a self-esteem tool is an unexpected bonus, she said.

“I think it’s very presumptuous of me to try to give someone self-esteem,” she said. “Who am I to say, ‘ You don’t like yourself enough? Here’s my book.’ But when adults and children come to me and tell me I’ve helped them, it’s an honor. It’s a gift.”
Thanks to Don Imus’ faulty internal censor, the controversy over the word “nappy” that plagued Herron in the late 90s has returned. But make no mistake, she said, there is little that’s the same about her book title and Don Imus’ “nappy-headed hoes.”
“I never thought of [nappy] as an insulting word,” she said, “although people can use it in insulting ways. Nappy hair and nappy-headed are quite different words. Nappy hair is something that you have. Nappy-headed, in many ways, implies that you’re defined by your hair. Even if you are calling someone a nappy-headed genius, it’s almost like it reduces the genius to nappy-headedness.”
It’s not up to her, or any other individual, to decide what will come of a word that can be both used in a children’s book and as a hateful punchline by an insensitive shock jock.
And, in the end, despite the fact that she wrote a book about Brenda and her nappy hair and recognizes how important hair is to the African American community and beyond, Herron said there is one over-arching truth to remember.
“When it gets right down to it,” she said, “it’s what’s inside your head, not what’s on it, that is most important.”

:yep:
 
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