So, I know that I am a little late with this, but I wanted to include the next installment in this series. As we left off in part 1, we as the African people adapted to this “new” group of people. I should really reword that to convey that we really didn’t have a choice in the matter. The elaborate customs of our people were beaten out of us with every cracked whip, and extraneously long day of labor. Not only that but the nutrients that our hair needed was no longer available to us.
Our identity was lost. During this forced period of encountering Europeans (now called
Americans and slavery) we were subjugated to the standards of whites during this time. We
were thought to be less than human, because of not only our skin, but our language, customs and even our hair. The matted texture of the African hair was thought to be animal like, no
human being would be marred by God with what whites thought to be impurities.
These were the teachings of European Originated men to his family and his slaves. We did not have the rights of humans because in their eyes we were not human. But then times changed, all of sudden we are being told that we are no longer slaves. But we were still animals in their eyes. So, we began to change ourselves; we began to talk like them, abandoning our native tongue out of fear of punishment. We began to desire to dress like them and eventually wear our hair like them. By the 1900’s, the straightening comb and products of the like were introduced into the black community.
So, we began to press our hair and continue to pass on the ignorant notion that who God has made us to be is unnatural and if we wanted to make it in life, we needed to change ourselves completely. We did this to be seen as human and to be accepted into society. As time passed it seemed that this method of conforming did little to help us be treated as humans. We were still subjugated to the Jim Crow Laws, segregation, the war on drugs, police brutality and true sentence, etc.; we were still seen as unnatural. Let me ask you this why did we allow ourselves to be so brain washed to not even see that it didn’t matter what we did, we still were not as good as and forever seen as other?
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