It wasn’t about hair. It was the fact the attacking Black women and girls in a public space is big business in this country. Its also a safe business. first White editorial decision makers and entertainment execs are all too willing to green light images which reinforce stereotypes. In this case there were two, the first is that natural Black hair is a defect which must be managed or cured. The second is that somehow Black children require “special instructions” to raise.

I actually think this discussion has been symbolic and clarifying. You see, anyone who would excuse, annotate, explain, promote, support or anything other than condemn attacking a 4 year old in a national magazine is an enemy of Black women.

Because you won’t find a more innocent symbol than a 4 year old child, and even then some people could not bring themselves to draw a line and say “we don’t abuse children in this way.” If we won’t enforce boundaries to protect black women and girls, who the heck will? Do we expect White executives to defend little Black girls? If they did, any number of you would line up to condemn them if this comments section is any indication

There ’s nothing complicated about this issue. This woman attacked this child’s physical appearance for pure profit. She scrounged around in the bottom of the barrel of Black online commentary to do it by quoting MTO. She picked a target that was vulnerable because she knew Angelina and Brad can’t clap back on the issue of Black hair and resentment of interracial adoption would silence others. She also knew she could rely on the large number of you who believe that if our “mask” isn’t perfect then we’ve invited criticism, abuse and as some of you have stated, the loss of gainful employment.

So Zahara’s hair was an easy mark. As are our butts, our skin, our relationship status, our clothes, our general way of being. Many of you will justify PUBLIC abuse of Black women and girls by laying Blame on some defect in the Black girls or woman. Some of you believe a 4 year old or her mother “asked for it” by not meeting your expectations as to appearance.

No the defect is in Allison Williams and in her supporters, enablers, and explainers. YOU’RE DEFECTIVE! Because even if I had an opinion about a 4 year old’s behavior or an appearance, as a compassionate adult, I know that I am not entitled to attack a child or harm a child based on those opinions. What’s MORE distressing is those of you who think attacking a 4 year old’s appearance is “helpful” or “therapeutic.”

When you see Zahara, you see her physical self and demand that she view herself in physical terms as well and the ripe old age of four. Others see her emotional self. The aren’t looking at her hair, but trying as they may to discern whether she’s happy at 4 years old.

Children are the closest to God we will ever become. They are blank slates. They tend to love unconditionally and they are free from the dysfunction many of us acquire as life happens.

Now a Pandora’s box has been opened, by savaging this child’s appearance in a national publication, Samuels waved a flag that its open season on Zahara’s appearance in mainstream media. I knew it was coming, but didn’t expect it to arrive at 4. I was hoping people would wait until at least 14.
But I forgot, little Zahara’s a little girl with brown skin and curly hair, she gets no immunity or protection in the public space, if fact savaging her is incentivised.

Now some have described my views as Nazi-ism. No, its called having standards that don’t tolerate adults beating up on CHILDREN in my face and turning a blind eye and excusing it in any way. When rebuking an adult for abusive behavior, I don’ take a long and winding view. If I saw Allison Samuels slapping a child on the street, I’d call her out on the street.I Make no mistake, this article by Samuels was an act of child abuse with the potential to leave much longer lasting scars than the physical variety.

I don’t negotiate or explain away child abuse and anyone who does is complicit in that abuse.

You call it being narrow minded. I call it having STANDARDS and values. Child abuse is unacceptable.

With that, this discussion is over. thanks for participating.

No, I gave nom opinion on transracial adoption other than to say that sometimes the parents don’t know what to do with a black childs hair, so then they seem to just give up.

Thanks for your comments, as they prove my point in that adoptee parents, by not understanding (or caring about) the upkeep and grooming of our hair, will sometimes let it go “any ol’ way” and don’t or can’t take care of it – leading to esteem issues in their adopted children years later.

Your comments about “pretty, straight hair” and “that something about my hair was terribly, terribly wrong” is truly proof of the esteem issues that can arise.

Quote: “BTW, I love ya too:) Just having a long frustrating week.”

LOL.

Trust me. I understand. Hang in there.

BTW, I love ya too:) Just having a long frustrating week.

I truly believe that evil is taking us over.

We all know the root of the pathology. Hair as a racial marker, measured on the slave block. Hair relaxers first sold alongside face-whitening creams. The straight, blonde, “Euro-centric” standard of beauty so ingrained in all of us thanks to a million whispers of media and aftermaths of white colonialism. Then there’s the added pressure of being a woman in a society that insists on measuring female worth according to beauty. The issues are tied together and IF we are not careful–only if we aren’t–we can internalize these messages.

Every woman likes to change her appearance on occasion, just for fun. That’s why I don’t agree with outright criticism of women who wear wigs/weaves or relax their hair. If underneath that desire to manipulate hair in a particular way is something deeper, something painful–then we have a problem. I think a way to find out whether there is a problem is to talk about it. The more aware we can be of these issues the better off we are.

Now, when it comes to transracial adoption, as (I think it was) Lena stated, this can get tricky. Some people say adoption has also been a site of colonialism in a lot of ways, in that kids are uprooted from their home culture and taken to live in a (often) white, upper class home. As a biracial adoptee raised by white parents, I can tell you this is complicated. I can tell you that my parents didn’t know what to do with my hair, didn’t know how to comb it or cut it. Kids would tease me about my Afro on the playground, call me the n-word, and I had no tools nor resources with which to deal with it. My dolls and my favorite actresses and my mother had pretty, straight hair. All I knew was that something about my hair was terribly, terribly wrong. It was only as I got older and began having these conversations (and also stopped relaxing my hair) that I felt I could unwind these painful messages and embrace myself as a black-white woman in this country.

So what I hope is that Angelina Jolie seeks knowledge about how to keep her daughter’s hair healthy. I hope she embraces her daughter’s hair and makes sure to counteract society’s messages by telling her again and again that she is beautiful just the way she is.

Okay…I’ll bite. For a moment, I’ll allow myself to get pulled over by the behavior police. I read the article about Matrice Richardson and I read the comments and couldn’t think of a single thing to add. I considered adding…another missing black woman…but this group has spent countless comments and no doubt will spend countless more considering that phenomenon.

I also stopped by several more blogs talking about Matrice Richardson. So, although I personally made no comment…it didn’t mean that I didn’t care. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the posters here did the same thing. WAOD is a favorite stomping ground for me…but it isn’t the only one.

So, quite honestly, Tracy…you have no idea if we’re posting a hundred times on hair on WAOD on this site and three hundred times on twenty different sites about Matrice. I mean…that whole “free will” thing means we get to do what we want when we want.

So…I feel pretty safe commenting for most if not all WAOD posters (sorry, Gina)…we’re concerned about Matrice. It bothers us that the media doesn’t pay very close attention to missing black women.

But your chastisement of this is akin to walking up to a group of black women and commenting that we’ve decided to talk an hour about one subject and only twenty minutes on another. I have no doubt…the group of women would turn around and look at you as if you’d temporarily lost your mind.

And…it’s not lost on me, that you also took the time to stop by here and post AND HAD NOT POSTED ON THE MATRICE RICHARDSON article as of this comment.

I don’t understand, Tracy. But, I love you anyway.