Good Hair

It's been almost three weeks since I saw Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair. I left the theater with such sadness and a sinking feeling in my stomach. I came of age in the 60's and 70's, a time when we began to reclaim ourselves in public and private as people of African descent with our own expression of human beauty. We reclaimed from shame many things, among them: dark skin, full lips, rounded noses, our culture, and our natural hair. Wearing my hair in a variety of natural styles for the past 30 some years has been one of the most freeing and feel good experiences in my life. There is nothing to hide, no rain or moisture to fear, no forcing its nature to adopt some other nature over and over again.

There was something surreal about listening to the many black women in Good Hair , most of whom seem bound to keeping their hair straight, long and full, if possible, and by nearly any means necessary. It felt like we could be in the 1930's, 40's 50's, the only difference being our methods of straightening. Even in the 60's Odetta stood alone. It saddens me greatly because it seems that so many black women still only experience their hair as attractive or beautiful, to the extent that it matches the straight hair of Europeans and others. As Chris Rock made graphic when he tried to sell black hair, 'nobody wants it.' I think I might have felt better if some of the women had talked openly about how they don't want it, how it's unattractive, undesirable, "not good" to them. The surreal factor would have gone down for me, because at least I would have had the sense of their being connected to the feelings of hair inferiority and ugliness that underlie the intense pursuit of different hair. But I didn't hear this, or any reflections about the meaning, like we did in the 60's and 70's. Why do I feel my kinky hair isn't good, can't be managed? Why can't I see hair beauty in an African (traditional) way, in the way I have?
In the movie, it all seemed light-hearted fun and stylistic.

My sadness has to do with the continuing ways we as African-Americans continue to be impacted by racism, and the ways we have internalized it, that is, subscribe to its values that alienate us from the goodness of our form of human expression. No one likes to admit this, and we are often disconnected from the underlying shame that still lives. But I am fully with Terrie Williams, author of Black Pain, on this. Our healing is limited as long as we keep operating as though the surfaces we paste over the pain are all there is, are good enough. Chris Rock's daughter came inside crying to ask her dad why she didn't have good hair. She was fully connected with the pain. Hair is just one of the aspects of African identity and culture that has borne generational shame, and I have not been immune, as I believe none of us has. But I've committed to being on a healing journey for my own life, my collective community, and ultimately the world community.

And despite my initial reactions to Chris Rock's film, I applaud him for shining this light, for opening this up, because I believe we are in a time in which we can go deeper into the shame-based pain and understand that it does not belong to us. Something shameful has happened but we don't need to own it, bind it to us, or recreate it with someone else. And then there's the issue of courage and power. One of the most brilliant expressions in the film, in my opinion, was "relaxed hair relaxes white people." But how will white people have the opportunity to learn how to relax around natural hair if we keep helping them avoid it. Keeping them comfortable is about power, but it does not empower us, nor does it help whites to look at the way they use their privilege to maintain one standard of goodness.

When I go outside on the streets of New York, Atlanta, even Winston-Salem, there are locks, twists, pullouts, cornrows,women in light Caesar cuts dotting the straightened hairdos. We're not exactly in the 40's and 50's hairdo-wise, but the idea of "good hair" still exists and except for the commercials, representation of black women on TV delivers daily doses of this toxic notion.