Oooo, you don’t like my hair…
You don't like my hair in its natural state? You think I look too peasantry, yes? I'm too pretty for my hair to look like this? You compare my natural, freshly washed, shaped hair to your oily, nasty, and dirty hair.
Ooo, you don't like my hair. You don't like my ability to express my Afrocentric features. You don't like how I can be happy with something you've been taught to hate. You don't like that I don't feel the pressure to look like you with your thinning crown and dusty tresses.
So you don't like my hair? You don't like my statement of pride for my heritage and cultures. You don't like my difference. Because before I took out my long single braids, we were the same, huh? In your eyes, we were both trying to make ourselves into acceptable versions. In your own twisted mind, I needed to be like you in some way, and you enjoyed that feeling. You enjoyed the screwed up feeling of being falsely desired by a beautiful women. Being superior to me in those few weeks gave you permission to comfort me and apologize for all the wrong in my life.
You don't like my hair like this? -_-
Do you want a sticker for being honest with me? Are you trying to get me to feel bad about myself? Because you've fostered some kinship, I'm supposed to what? Care about what you think? Girl, I was born Black and African in America forced to live in Mississippi where your little micro-aggression doesn't hold a candle to my experiences in this society. I've negotiated and renegotiated my identity so many times through these macro- and micro-aggressions that your little statement only allows me to exercise my regal status. My hair ? Really? Girl, really? Come after my intellect, the plight of the African-American youth, the fate of the black community, the weaknesses in American government, Obama's comments on immigration, something that's going to make me think or something. You coming after my hair only displays your weak sense of social and intellectual ability.
What you need to reconcile is that you don't like my existence unless it fades into what you've constructed through years of oppression and slavery to false ideology. You really don't like how my hair represents my own liberation from the norms you believe in, which constantly changes. What you really don't like? What really bothers you is how I reflect fault in your system. You don't want to accept that I've changed the very meaning of your existence. I have, Black and African as I am, caused your world to fall apart.
It's the characteristic of a Queen, a woman whose presence can shatter the earth's very foundation. And you don't like my hair? Ha. Let my glorious curls be over all your empty fallen earth. You should count it an honor to even bask in my presence.
