A Throwback...

Last night I broke the cardinal rule in my Hair Handbook and washed my hair during the work week. Such activity is strictly forbidden because it leaves me wondering what to do with a mass of wet hair at bed time. When I decided to wash my hair anyway, I put it in about 30 stick plaits that made me look even more like an overly developed 12 year old. Then I washed it and went to bed. Upon waking up, I promptly discovered that the front of my hair was dry and the back of it was still quasi-wet. Not a problem, or so I thought.


Until I began taking out said 30 plaits an hour before I had to leave for work. At first, everything was kosher; the front came out crinkly and wavy like Ore Ida fries. Yay! Then I made way to the wet part of my hair, and the explosion ensued. Never mind that, by the time I even got there, I only had thirty minutes to take out the rest of my hair, eat breakfast, watch Good Morning America, and make lunch. So I tried to do all four at the same time. But I digress--the explosion. When my hair dries, even after being twisted or braided, it transmogrifies into a cloudy/ cotton bally/ frizzy poof. Picture this: electric-socket hair framed by Ore Ida fries hair. Lightning bolts and cotton fields. Harry Potter birthmarks and cumulo-nimbus puffs. Naturally, like any sane, competent woman, I panicked! I tried to pin it back, but I could literally hear my hair laughing at me as it swallowed the bobby pins, clips, and ties. I tried to pony tail it back, immediately realizing that the more I pushed my headband back, my hair would bunch up at the top like a rabbit's tail. Frustration of all frustrations! At one point, I even decided that if my co-workers had to see me with puffy starfish hair, so be it.


But the Force wouldn't let me out the bathroom looking like that. Finally, I thought WWOD: What Would Oprah Do? And it came to me, quick as a flash, and five minutes before I had to run out the door: "Screw it." I put a crooked part in the front of my hair with my fingers, pulled a headband on, and I screwed it.


I actually didn't finish taking out the braids before I left for work. I had a few left in the back of my head. I was hoping nobody would see me in between the house and the car, but my neighbor came out the same time I did. I bet she thought I was racist running down the stairs from her (she's Hispanic) before she could see my head. I really did look like a puff of hair with three rat tails sticking out the back. It was a mess. I was bobbing and weaving in traffic with one hand in a braid, the other itching to flick off this lady tailgating me.


I sometimes wish I had the type of hair I had to wash everyday. (but not really). My hair thrives on moisture and oils because it's so spirally, so if I washed it everyday, it'd be paper-dry and brittle. If I go to bed w/out twisting, braiding or something, I wake up with smushed helmet fro. It ain't cute. Then I'd end up having to wet it every morning, and that makes it tangled.
All this to avoid looking like a black Oompa Loompa everyday.
Who said nappy life is boring? These are the tales of a corporate nappy head, reminding everybody:


STAY DOWN FOR THE STRUGGLE! :)

b/c black hair is one.

Black Sheeple, Get it Right!

So often in politics, journalists, politicians and talking heads refer to “the black community” as a monolithic group, especially around elections. You hear, “How will such and such candidate help the black community’s needs?” Then you’ll hear ad campaigns—barely escaping the category of propaganda—on black radio designed to convince you that the Other candidate doesn’t care about black people. Racial smear tactics were common during the 2008 House and Senate elections in Atlanta, where a black Democratic politician said of his black Republican opposition, “She doesn’t even like us.” “Us” meaning black people. It does not need to be said that Presidential election literature teemed with racial insinuations and renouncements. Atlanta’s impending mayoral election on November 3 is no different; the city dubbed “Black Hollywood” has had at least three black mayors in the past forty years, one of them a woman. The current mayoral race is strongly between two black Democrats (Lisa Borders and Kasim Reed) and a white Republican (Mary Norwood), all of whom have very strong political ties and records. In late August a memo circulated, authored by several leading members of the “black community” in Atlanta, urging voters to gather behind Borders because she was the black candidate closest to Norwood in the polls. And again this idea resurfaced on a popular radio morning show, where an anonymous male listener complained, “We need to unify! Kasim or Lisa needs to drop out of the race so that they can’t conquer and divide us like that. They’re trying to split the black vote!” The radio hosts made certain to disclaim the idea that they themselves espoused voting based on race, but the idea was not new to them nor me. But I have to admit that I am a bit peeved.



The idea of a unified black voting community is problematic for me; as a black woman, I belong to this community by default…anonymous except by vote. A community must have a leader, and in the so-called black community, these leaders are not elected, but rise through their own recognizance. But what happens when members belongs to more than one group or social class? Creating a block by calling for patrons to vote based on ambiguous uniting interests ignores multifaceted needs within the community itself. Ironically enough, so many black people lambasted white Republicans for voting against Barack Obama simply because he is black; almost a year into the Presidency, Glenn Beck et al continue to aggravate Democratic pundits by stirring up fear that this black president has it in for white people. But when black community “leaders” incite the same fears among constituents, it’s proclaimed “unity.” It reads the same to me. Perhaps if I understood more precisely what those mysterious black issues were, then maybe I would be more inclined to listen to endorsements. I am not, however, a sheeple that will blindly heed my beneficent black leader’s recommendation for an elected official without weighing out and praying about the options.


Furthermore, the “drop out of the race” sentiment insults all candidates running with the notion that only their skin color, and not their platform, makes them worthy of support. The unfortunate candidate lower in the polls is then expendable with a “You are the weakest link: goodbye” quickness. In either case of the “vote for the closest black” memo or the disgruntled radio listener calling for black unification, platform never enters the conversation. Obviously, if Lisa Borders or Kasim Reed thought they did not possess qualities valuable to the city, they would voluntarily sit out the race. The concern with “splitting the black vote” operates from the false assumption that there is One Monolithic Black Vote, and that it can be tampered with if more than one (black) (Democratic) candidate runs for a given office. The monolithic black community vote worries about appearances first—how many black faces do we have—and assesses issues last. I would rather use my intelligence to vote issues first and then praise appearances last.

A Quick Thought on the President's Nobel Peace Prize

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA WON THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE!

I am proud of our President for having received one of the most honorable recognitions in the world. Do I believe that this recognition may have come a bit early? Yes and no. According to Nobel’s will for the award, it should go to an individual who, “during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
You could argue that President Obama’s diverse, incredibly mobilized coalition of Americans during his campaign constitutes “most or best work for fraternity between nations,” nations being used loosely to describe nationalities and races.


Plenty of other people could have won the Peace Prize (i.e. his fellow nominees). President Obama wasn’t the only person deservedly nominated. In my humble opinion, it’s myopic of Americans to suggest that we because we don’t know of anyone else who could have won it, there IS no nobody else. Two weeks into his term, there was not much the President could have done to reduce standing armies or to physically effect a change in an armed conflict. And no one would expect him to–it was too soon. It is indeed thrilling to witness the change that this man’s very presence has had on the world, but you cannot quantify hope; you cannot measure hope on paper or verify its effect the way you can tally the reduction in a nation’s weapons.

But perhaps that’s why the Nobel committee chose him: hope is something so rare that it need not be weighed or tested, but applauded and praised. It’s just miracle enough that one man has inspired so many.

The Inspirational Horse Pill for today

So I've decided that I'm going to be a writer. Wait...I decided on this at age five. I guess that means I'm re-making this decision, like I do every year. Well, old girl turns 27 in a short three weeks, not getting younger, and I'm not quite a writer yet. Yesterday I read--like an obsessed teenager--the blog/diary of a UK girl not unlike myself, and it chronicled her 6-year journey to the publication of her novel. In short the diary was amazing. No, not the grammar or spelling or any other technical element--her earnestness and perseverance convicted me. Here's why I suck and I want to be like Lola Jaye when I grow up.

1. She got rejected about a million times. I fear rejection as if I'm in high school trying to be noticed. I have never been rejected because I've never sent anything out. Oh, I've prepared...bought $20 worth of stamps, a pack of manila envelopes, printed out goo-gobs of paper with poems carefully made anonymous, studied open submission seasons for journals, created file after file of places to send off to. The excuses pile up quicker than the dust on my send-off materials, faint, but just enough to stop me.

2. She kept writing. I, on the other hand, suffered major setbacks from my sole almost-rejection/blessing in disguise of being rejected by my school's poetry department. Her agent made her write, re-write, revise, edit, scratch, screw-up, three different novels; then they worked the right one.

3. She didn't give up. Periodically, I hate being called a poet because I don't consider myself one unless I'm writing, and I am not currently writing. The title requires you to produce on demand; there is no one to demand of me what I do not supply from within. So I relinquish the title rather than produce, discard any dreams and settle, again like dust. Wipe me down, please.

Reading the frustration of quasi-regular person--she still works a Day Job???--who actually Did it spurs me to want to paste rejection letters as decor around my apartment instead of Kohl's wall art. I want to tell the literary world, as corny as it sounds, to BRING IT, so I can heave warrior cries until someone wants to publish me. The truth about it is, writers do not get discovered. Hoity-toity publishers don't just stumble across them on a corner or at a poetry joint or a talent competition. Writers must make themselves known, push themselves and their words into the consciousness of people who have propel power. So if I'm going to be a writer--a published one, not a yearning-to-write/scared little mouse of a wannabe--then I will be my own fuel.

So the inspirational, hard-to-swallow Horse Pill of the day is this: Get off your fear, get ON your behind and write or settle and choke on your own dust for the rest of your life.

The REAL Black on Black Crime

If you're up on national news for this week, then you've probably heard about the brutal beating death of Chicago teen Derrion Albert this past Monday (9/28). He was only 16 years old. Caught on the street in the middle of two warring gangs outside his school, he was fatally bludgeoned with a two-by-four. His offense? Daring to help a friend of his who was getting jumped. Some bystander recorded the whole thing on a camera, and you can watch it on YouTube. It's incredibly saddening and scary, the viciousness with which these half-kids/half-adults attacked their classmate. They swung at his head with that beam and he crumpled like a sock puppet.

A local black radio station discussed the incident this morning and aired a Rick Sanchez CNN interview with a Chicago PD Officer. And once again, I heard the anguished phrase uttered by victims and families of victims (especially black ones) each time a tragedy occurs.

"How could this happen? Why did no one help?"

When anything terrible goes down, that question stands as the most consistent one echoed across the media. What? An accident/shooting/terrorist attack/flood? Who is responsible? Who can we blame? How could this have been prevented? And it's entirely legitimate to plot out alternative endings in your mind, to evaluate and scheme a different outcome than the one in which a loved one died or became injured. In crimes where there are witnesses, a caller inevitably rants, "No one stood up for the victim. Everyone just stood around and watched."

Atlanta has no shortage of frozen bystanders. Remember Soula Girl on the MARTA train harrassing the elderly lady? Yeah, I laughed, too, like the rest of the city; but her brand of crazy was scientifically real. On the 3:36 of footage, almost 2 minutes goes by with the admittedly bipolar girl yelling before other passengers address her. The Atlanta community was also in an uproar over the fatal shooting of hometown resident and former boxer Vernon Forrest in the neighborhood of Mechanicsville. He chased his robbers down, then gave up; they then returned from around the corner and shot him several times in the back. Days later, members of the community banded together, saying that somebody knew where the shooters lived. Someone knew and saw what happened. A few weeks ago, other bystanders watch a white man beat a black woman on the Cracker Barrel porch in front of her daughter. No one helped her, either.

The frozen bystander issue is more than just Stop Snitching at work. It's the harshest black on black crime, where bystanders and witnesses are so afraid to be hurt/get involved, that fear glues any resolve to help onto the cold pavement. On the Derrion Albert video, a girl cries out toward the end, "Derrion, get up!" Truly heartbreaking. But the videographer actually jumped out of a car seconds earlier to film the attack. There were dozens of teenagers running in and around the street. Another boy provided a soundtrack to Derrion's blows with a well-timed "Damn!" for each whack across the head. There was no shortage of witnesses, no shortage of able-bodied people with hands and feet and voices. And Derrion died surrounded by all of them.

Victims will always die in the midst of other human beings because there is the very real threat that extending a hand is akin to risking your own life. When I taught freshman English, I discussed an essay where a woman was murdered in her building. She cried for help loudly, and the whole building heard her, but no one did anything. This occurred in the sixties. My majority black and Hispanic classes was somber, but most of them concurred with the neighbors. It wasn't their business to react or help. Keep to yourself and keep your mouth shut. If you see something, don't say nothing. The stony hardness etched on their faces was resolute, haunted. If they valued their own lives, and those of their families, mouths had better stay zip-locked tight. I was shocked then. They would allow friends, family members, neighbors to remain in danger while they hid away safely? But now, after seeing countless, senseless acts of violence by black folk against black folk, knowing that other witnessing black folk will say nothing? Nothing surpises me any longer except the continual public shock and dismay that no one helps. At least my students were honest enough to admit, publicly, that they couldn't. Everyone likes to say they would help, but when faced with negative retribution for doing good, what will you do? I only pray God would help me do the right thing.

I daresay that the bystanders around Derrion Albert outnumbered his assailants. But out of the crowd, even the one anguished girl who cried for him to arise with a bashed-in skull, no one--not a single person--could defeat the singular demon of fear in his or her heart and save Derrion. Living with that terror is the real black on black crime. I hope, for their sakes, to never die among friends who could have helped me.

May Derrion rest in peace, and may his attackers be brought to justice. But more importantly, may we as human beings be unafraid to lend our hand when someone else needs it.

Dunh dunh dunh-dunh! I'm baaaaaack!

I's married now!!!

I took a short break from the home front to, well, get married! Then there were all the boxes of blackademianut books I had to stuff into our new closets because there's no place to put them. But I am super-pleased to be back to the business of hating on things and indulging in craziness.

The wedding was about as peachy as a Florida-Georgia transplant, long-distance planned shindig could get! The Honey surprised me and wore an ivory tux, but had the groomsmen wear chocolate brown tuxes. Chocolate-clad black folk everywhere, smelling wonderful and tasty, and happy. Everyone looked about as gorgeous as my beloved cupcakes, which I just adored. I wish I could've eaten more!

But the best part, God generously smiled on us, and I am now the proud wife of a Transformers-loving, PS3/Wii/Nintendo DS-playing chemist who can get down to some Michael Jackson.

(And oh yes, we did mama se mama sa mama coo sa on MJ's birthday! Hands on your knees, hands on your knees!)

Consider me married, peoples!

I Hate: Unprofessional Professionals

I believe in supporting black businesses, especially salons, but I do have one caveat. You cannot treat me like the red-headed stepchild and take my patronage for granted. Certainly not when I'm paying you money in the middle of a recession. This is the story of two black women lost a customer in one day.

So, yours truly drove 7 hours (with The Honey) to Tampa from ATL to tie up some loose wedding plans last weekend. I'm doing my best to tamp down on the Bridezilla, but I swear this one (now former) vendor had me yelling to myself in the car. We arrived in Tampa at 2 am on Friday morning, and I had a 10 am hair appointment. I got myself up at about 8:15, groggy as heck, and drove 30-odd minutes all the way down to West Tampa from my parents' house.

PAUSE--Now, about CP Time. I don't agree with it, but I comprehend the insanity that goes behind saying you'll be in one place at such-and-such time, but you happen to be five or ten minutes late. Late happens. But if you live in any large-enough city, you learn to allow yourself travel time. Also, CP should not apply to those in a profession where they are dependent on clientele and customers. It's just a part of being an adult...or so I thought.

UNPAUSE--Tell me why my stylist, whom I'll call T, was not there when I arrived at her shop? Door shut, curtains drawn, lights off, nobody's home. The shop hours read in plain white on the barred door: "Mon-Fri 10-6." I thought to myself, "Oh, she must be running a couple minutes late. I'll wait for her." Thirty minutes later, the woman arrived, all smiling teeth and round cheeks as if she hadn't just wasted thirty minutes of my time, my gas and A/C, and my vocal chords. You see, while she chatted it up with her neice outside her truck, yours truly was yelling at her.

PAUSE--I am cursed with chronic passive aggressiveness and an inability to communicate when I'm angry at people. I'll write about it, rant about it later, but my cowardice runs so deep in person.

UNPAUSE-- T smiled at me as I emerged from my car, so I pasted a wooden smile on, even hugged the lady, and greeted her nicely. (My inner Bridezilla also apparently runs on CP time, and didn't show up to give her how I really felt; I was so mad.) Here's what really pissed me off: she had the nerve to say to me dismissively: "Oh, sorry I'm late. I can't ever seem to get here on time. I'm coming all the way from Land O'Lakes. I thought: "What in the ham fat does that have to do with me?! Sounds like a personal problem you need to rectify." What I said was: Oh, it's okay.

Yes, I know I have a problem. I'm working on that, but I'm afraid it's going to be a lifelong project.

I followed her in the shop, where I eventually found out she had triple-booked my time slot. So I was one of three heads she was doing. You know the switcheroo where one person spends 1.5 hours under the dryer, just waiting until the stylist completes the other lady's hair? My total time logged in at the salon that day: almost 4.5 hours. I didn't leave until 1:55, horribly late for a 1:00 appointment I'd already set with my baker.

On top of spaghetti, here's the cheesy covering: her colleague, also the shop's owner, had the nerve to ask me about the hair texture of an acquaintance. "Is her hair texture good like yours? Because if it's not, I won't be able to do a rod set on her hair." Nothing brings out my Nappy Nazi like a black hair stylist insinuating they can only work with one texture of hair.

Needless to say, T is fired from doing my wedding hair, but she doesn't know it yet. Bridezilla will most certainly come out if have to spend a quarter of the day before my wedding in her shop watching her do 10 other heads. I struggle between calling her and telling her and just letting my appointment on August 28 come and no-show. Or maybe I should call her thirty minutes after the appointment, like she did me? Unfortunately, that's the least Christian way I know how, and despite my desire to continue my passive aggressiveness, I will probably call her up and inform her of this:

I hate unprofessional professionals. You are the weakest link: goodbye.