So let's go back to a month ago on June 26th when the popular website CurlyNikki.com featured a White woman on their site as the hair icon (Click here to read original story). Sarah, aka waterlily716, is a popular YouTuber and is one of the women who popularized the Curly Girl Method. She explains her "natural hair journey" from wearing a bun to a wearing her hair down and even goes on to say that "there’s something very freeing about accepting your natural hair."
Now that's the background story. There are also a few facts that one should keep in mind before I continue my opinion. For one, CurlyNikki.com is no longer Black owned. The site has been sold to Texture Media who also have control of the site NaturallyCurly.com (a multitextured hair site). The second is that CurlyNikki technically isn't a website only for Black women. I say technically because in the site's About section there is no such claim. But on the same hand, the site is primarily supported and viewed by Black women. Let's get all that clear right now. Stick some pins there and let's keep right on moving!
So with all this in the back of your mind, let's move to our dear friend, Sarah. Oh boy, did CurlyNikki really do this woman a disservice. I really pitied this woman at first because I really thought she was oblivious until I read some of Facebook and Twitter response to the negative backlash...
Although I cannot put all the blame on Sarah (I blame CurlyNikki.com for even posting it without taking a second thought), this event definitely got people talking. The question we all face now is whether or not the Natural Hair Movement should be inclusive of White women. In this year, 2014, I'm so happy that the majority of us Black women can put our foot firmly down and respond with a forceful, "NO!"
Here are my reasons to why the Natural Hair Movement should be exclusive of non Black people:
1. Racism and Underrepresentation FORCED the Creation of the Natural Hair Movement
It seems to me that the naysayers of the exclusivity of the Natural Hair Movement have deluded themselves to think this is racism or reverse racism at that (which doesn't exist). Let's tackle that one first, shall we? For one, Black people collectively have no power so we can not partake in the act of racism. We can be bigots, discriminate, and be prejudice, but we cannot be racist. Let's make that very clear. Secondly, racism and underrepresentation were the catalyst of this movement. Take a look at top the picture I choose for this article. THAT right there is why we created this movement. We, as Black women, were underrepresented in almost every area from fashion, beauty, hair, etc. Our EXCLUSION forced us to carve a space for ourselves. When White people didn't allow us into their mansion, we decided to create a small house for ourselves and now they want to take that over as well. No. When it came to our friend Sarah, she had many, many other outlets to share her story but why did she have to pick one of the few safe havens for Black women with natural hair?
2. History Repeats Itself
"Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results," said the wise Albert Einstein. This is nothing new. White people have a history of "admiring," appropriating, and conquering what is not uniquely theirs. For those of you who "don't understand" where I am coming from, i'll give some examples. Rock n' Roll. Created by Black people and then appropriated by Whites. Soul Food now dubbed "Southern Cuisine." Our slang- "what's up" is now socially acceptable because it was appropriated by Whites. Multicolored hair has been acclaimed as "trendy" on White women but still looked as "ghetto" on Black women. Nothing changes and once we allow White into this movement, don't be surprised if you look in a history book 50 years from now and White people have claimed that they started this movement. Don't say Jumi didn't tell you.
Simply put, their White privilege allows them to not see the blinding differences between a White woman with "natural hair" versus a Black woman with natural hair. As our dear friend Sarah so eloquently put it- "it's just hair." It's just hair for you, Sarah, because you wearing your hair naturally doesn't hinder you from a job, finding a mate, having military rules put against you, getting expelled from school, or even receiving severe backlash from people who look just like you. No, Sarah, you can't relate because at the end of the day you are still being represented. You will never understand why it is nothing for Taylor Swift or Sarah Jessica Parker to walk on the red carpet with her curls but it is a BIG deal for Viola Davis to do so. It is not just hair for a Black woman. The quicker you can comprehend that, the better you can understand how society works against a Black woman.
4. We Need Safe Spaces to Heal
For my closing argument, White women should not intrude on spaces created for Black women because we need those spaces to heal generations upon generations of being told that everything about us is ugly and undesirable either directly or indirectly. My friends, slavery is not over. We are still battling with the aftermaths of mental slavery today. The whole lightskin vs darkskin, good hair vs bad hair, type 3 curls vs type 4 kinks are still conversations that are being discussed today. We need safe spaces where we can discuss our generational pain and heal our open wounds (a bit overdue don't ya think?). We need safe spaces where we can address issues with OUR community, uplift one another, and promote our own beauty. Is that so much to ask?
Truth
JULY 6, 2014 AT 10:09 PM
This kind of navel-grazing right here is why white people are always stealing your shit from you. They took your rock music. They took your hip-hop and your rap. They want bits and pieces of your culture, your history, your fashion, your language, your dances and you just hand it over to them with a smile because you think it’ll make them like you. Except it doesn’t. They just manipulate it, mangle it beyond recognition and sell it to their white friends and they can’t even give you the credit, let alone the profit. And then suddenly what started out as yours, what started out as a way to celebrate yourself and your blackness in a society, in a world, that HATES everything black, has become just another product for white people to consume and throw away and you are nowhere to be found in any of it.
You keep deluding yourself thinking white women truly want to uplift “all women” and can’t see how this sudden need to be included is a direct response to the positive attention black women are getting in the media these days. Black women like Lupita and Kerry and Beyonce and Laverne who are smart and beautiful and talented and brave and are redefining beauty in a way that challenges current norms. Don’t think for one second that white women don’t have a vested interest in maintaining white standards of beauty. They have no reason to uplift black women and black beauty because the status quo as is works entirely in their favor. Because even though they are devalued as women, at least they are praised as white.
If white women wanted inclusiveness, they would’ve been by your side from day one, fighting this fight with you. They wouldn’t be jumping in now, years later, now that the natural hair movement is undeniably popular, now that the heavy lifting has been done COMPLETELY by you, demanding their fair share like they were in it from jump. Black hair and beauty is big billion-dollar business, and black women don’t own even 1% of it. And now you want to give the small part you can claim as yours away to white women before it’s barely even off the ground?
Tell me this: where were white women when black women were complaining about the lack of hair products for black women in mainstream? Where were white women when black women were complaining about the lack of beauty products for black women in mainstream? Where were white women when black women were flipping through pages and pages of fashion magazines and never seeing themselves reflected in any of the images in mainstream? Where were white women when it was impossible to see a black woman on TV rocking the hair that grows from her head? When it was impossible to see black women on TV at all? THEY WEREN’T THERE.
They were telling you to MAKE YOUR OWN. The default response to black women’s cries for better representation is always, always make your own. No sympathy. No calls for better representation from your so called white “sisters”, the ones you’re trying so hard to defend and include right now. Just shut up and do it yourself. So you did. You made something great and beautiful and you made black beautiful and now those same women who ignored you when you wanted to be included in their beauty, in their fashion, now they suddenly want, no demand, to be included in yours.
So my question to all the black women who keep tripping over themselves to include white women in a movement made to celebrate black women is this: why the hell do you keep giving and giving and giving to people who never give back? Why the hell do you think it’s your responsibility to be inclusive to people who have made not one, not two but THREE beauty industries (make-up, hair and fashion) that specifically, unabashedly, even arrogantly, exclude black women? Why do you think that you still have to carve out space for white women in the tiny corner that you have managed to create for yourself, when they couldn’t even be bothered to do the same for you? At what point do you stop being fucking doormats and own your shit instead of giving it away for free for five seconds of flattery from white women who will go back to ignoring you once they get what they want?
I’ll tell you this much: my beautiful baby sister has embraced her natural hair at 14, something I couldn’t do until I was 21. And it’s because black women have finally taken ownership of their beauty by creating safe spaces for themselves. You keep welcoming massa into those spaces with warm milk and cookies without expecting them to do their part and fight the virulent racism on their own turfs before demanding room in yours, and watch how quickly that safeness goes away. Watch how quickly you get decentralized and watch how quickly we regress back to white standards of beauty and black women become ugly again.
Don’t you people ever learn? None of this is new.