Politics of Black Hair

ORJ7 Comments

When rocking my daughter to sleep, I often spend time delighting in the patterns her hair makes on her head.  Like many people, her curl pattern is not uniform; it’s looser in the front and top, creating a soft crown of hair that I love to touch.  The hair in the back is more tightly wound, creating beautiful coils that dot her scalp.  The hair on the sides gently fan out in little waves, framing her tiny ears.

When I take her out in public, however, I sometimes forget to see the beauty of her hair, scanning as I am for the disapproval of others.  I find myself apologizing for the lint that her curls tend to trap.  If she’s just come from her father’s care, I interrogate him: “did you brush it before you left?!?”  In response to suggestions that her hair is short, I tensely explain, “it is growing; it’s just curly, so you can’t tell.”  The well-intentioned offers by relatives to “cornrow it so that it can grow” do not help.  In response, my back stiffens, and I plaster a smile on my face: “oh no; she’ll never sit for that.”

And, she won’t sit for it.  My 15-month old doesn’t like to be restrained, and since learning to walk and run, she doesn’t have to be.  But the truth is, I don’t want her hair braided or corn-rowed, because I like her poofy little afro.  Her short hair isn’t bothering her none, and it certainly doesn’t bother me.  My daughter is beautiful every day, whether her hair is long or short, lint-speckled or fresh from a washing, curled tight or billowed around her head like a halo.

I wish I could tell people this.  Tell white folks who have no experience with black hair that her coils are near perfect in their uniformity; that although more complicated to handle, black hair is the most versatile in the world.  Tell black folks who should know better that black hair needs moisture, not grease; gentle detangling, not too-tight cornrows; that every kink, standing for itself, does not have to be brushed out.  I’d like to tell everyone to abandon their obsession with long locks for my girl; stop teaching her at such an early age that she is less beautiful with tightly coiled hair.

But mostly I just smile and nod; it seems like such an uphill battle, and at this point in my life, I’m used to it.  After having worn locs for 2 years, a cousin asked me before I got married, “you’re gonna perm your hair for the wedding, right???”  When I go to the salon to get my hair re-tightened, the other stylists insist on standing near my chair, staring at my hair, and asking inane questions like “how does it stay???” Just yesterday, I thumbed through the pages of Essence magazine, and found not one article on natural hair care.  There was no end, however, of articles offering maintenance tips for chemically straightened hair.

I don’t begrudge other women the opportunity to make hair choices that are right for them.  But it saddens me that my family and friends don’t always appreciate the beauty of textured hair.  I don’t understand how you can be a licensed hair stylist but have absolutely no understanding of the basic mechanics of dreadlocs.  It’d be nice if acknowledgment and celebration of natural hair on black women went beyond a superficial pop-culture fixation on larger-than-life afros and perfectly groomed locs.

Until that day comes, I continue trying to shield my daughter from an onslaught of messages that undervalue her beauty, while navigating an aesthetic landmine of my own.  I’ve been talking about cutting off my locs and rockin’ a short afro for 2 years now, but I can’t work up the courage to do it; it seems I, too, am invested in a white beauty standard that prizes long hair.  Taking scissors to it all, however, just might be what liberates me from all this hair oppression, finally freeing me to delight in my child’s hair–and my own–whether we’re inside the house or out.

So much on my mind that I can’t recline…

Salina3 Comments

Grad school is a trip.

Everybody wants evidence. Sources. Citations. Quantitative. Qualitative.

Daily I’m bombarded with “how do you know?” , “where did you get this?” and my favorite “who else has said this?”.  As you can imagine, anecdotal evidence nor my experience just isn’t enough. That’s my professional life though, so I expect it….

I get offended when, during informal conversations, parents and teachers  ask my opinion and then quickly dismiss my suggestions.

It happened recently.

Twice.

In their “Yeeeahhhh, butttt….” I could hear “Where’s your evidence?”, “Who else said this?”… “How do you know?”

Well this one’s for ya’ll:

I’m one of the luckiest ones I suspect; I have the good fortune of being both a parent and a teacher. Thirteen years in the classroom and sixteen years as a parent have made me something of a resident “expert”. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers , 10000 hours is all that being an expert in virtually ANYTHING requires.

Hmmm….in terms of being a mother, I figure that’s 24 hours in a day X 365 days in a year – 65 days of summer and winter vacations away from him puts me at 7200 hours in a year.  If I multiply that by 16 years that gives me 115,200 hours.

As far as my teaching goes: 6 hours/day multiplied by 160 (low estimate) school days in a year puts me at 960 hours a year. If I multiply that by 13, I get 12480 hours of teaching. That does NOT include summer school teaching OR my position as an adjunct faculty member.

So yeah. I’m an expert. Dagnabit. 🙂

On Parenting/Teaching

The first two years are CRUCIAL for setting the tone. Much like the first two weeks of school. In both instances, the decisions you make (or don’t), the culture you create (or don’t), and the rapport you develop (or don’t) with the young’uns determine the next 9 months or 16 years.  I’m not saying it’s impossible to establish balance, peace, and harmony later on, but understand the struggle that awaits…

And even when the foundation has been laid, no crystal stair spirals to greet thee.

I tire of us blaming the children.

I tire of the shock and awed adults who just “can’t understand” how this happened.

I tire of the blame being placed on teachers.

I tire of the blame being placed on parents.

Our children/students don’t really need us to be their friends.

Our children/students need us to be their parents and teachers.

Our children/students don’t really need us to be cool and hip.

Our children/students need us to be firm and consistent.

Our children/students don’t really need us to smother, shelter, and protect them from the real world.

Our children/students need us to equip them with the critical consciousness, spiritual/ethical/moral grounding, and emotional competence to navigate and negotiate the real world.

Our children/students don’t need to do as we say.

Our children/students need us to do as we say.

Sincerely,

Salina (expert parent and teacher :))

What About Your Friends?

Dr. Mama Esq.15 Comments

I’ve been feeling a little friend-less lately.

My sister-friend and I compared our cellphone’s recent history the other day and realized the only calls we get are from each other.

I have 556 “friends” on Facebook, but when I announced my baby girl’s birthday on my profile page a couple of weeks ago, only six “friends” liked my announcement (3 of them were family) and four different people left a little message.

I participate in twitter, follow 95 people and have 91 followers. But I just tweeted “crying over folks who ain’t crying over me. *deep breath and klonopin*” and got crickets back. I often feel ignored on my timeline. It’s the least satisfying social networking tool ever.

I have friends from friends from high school and college on the East Coast. I go out of my way to keep in touch, to attend special events, to let them know that I care. When they call, and ask, “Are you busy?” Even if I am, I drop it, and attend to what they need. Only one of those friends has come here to visit me in the last three years that I’ve been here in California.

Here, in Palo Alto, I know a lot of people. One group of friends are about 12-20 years older than me, with children slightly older than mine, well-off mothers. Good people, we get together for mass playdates, ladies game nights, movie nights, dinners out and the like. But I don’t know anything about their relationships with their husbands, or what’s going on in their lives that has nothing to do with their kids. They regularly give me advice about my marriage and my childrearing, but not the other way around. It’s like I’m not an equal to them.

I’m having a get together on Saturday, of graduate student women. I’ve invited 31 women that I like, new grad students in the law school, women that I know look up to me. I don’t know what the turn out will be. So far 4 yes, 2 maybe, 1 no.

What about your friends / Will they stand their ground / Will they  let you down again?

What about your friends / Are they gonna be low down / Will they ever be around?

Or will they turn their backs on you?

As a black woman, who suffers from depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety, I’m currently suffering from a lack of connection. I feel like I’m looking at a bunch of backs. I’m currently having a panic attack because on the one hand, I don’t want people to start calling me off he hook. People don’t want to talk to me about my panic attacks and my anxiety because they don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to say about my physical issues for why I need to go to the urologist. They don’t know how to listen, not solve; how to hear my tears without trying to stop them.

But on the other hand, for my sanity, I need more than pills. I need friends. I need to know that my friends love me, care for me, would care if I wasn’t here anymore, enjoy my company, want to hear what I have to say, think I’m interesting. As black women and mothers, we need each other to be for each other. But right now, my lack of connection with any of those I used to call friends has me questioning whether I even know what a friend is anymore. What about you, dear reader? What about your friends?

*I edited this on Sunday, September 19 because I did not want to potentially hurt someone that could be called a friend.

WebMD Can Kill You

carolynedgar7 Comments

As anyone with an Internet connection who’s ever wondered about that weird bump on their back, that unfamiliar sensation in their chest or that rumbling in their tummy knows, the one thing you don’t want to do before going to see your doctor is look up your symptoms on WebMD. 

WebMD and similar medical information sites are the opposite of the doctor’s creed: “first do no harm.”  When you type symptoms into these sites, they invariably find the most lethal, life-shortening diseases imaginable.

Thanks to WebMD and its progeny, a few years ago, I thought the benign mass my doctor found during a routine examination would turn out to be an extremely rare and incurable form of bone cancer.  Earlier this year, WebMD had me convinced I was suffering from esophageal cancer.  In the back of my mind, I had already started thinking about contingency plans for the kids’ parenting, whether or not my life insurance was paid up, etc. 

It turned out I had a small stomach ulcer that was completely cured with a few weeks of medication and sensible eating.  That episode also cured me of self-diagnosis via WebMD.

Apparently, I should have passed the lesson down to my daughter.

On the first day of school last week, my 13 year-old daughter rushed me at the door as soon as I got home.  “Mommy, I got a fever at school!”

I felt her forehead.  She felt mildly warm, but nothing alarming. “Umm-hmm. Did you take anything?”

“No.”

“Take some Advil.” 

She scowled at me, clearly annoyed that I wasn’t fawning over her.

There was no school for the rest of the week because of Rosh Hashanah.  I knew whatever was causing this mild temperature spike would be over in time for school on Monday.  She, of course, was not so convinced.

The next day, she again announced that she had a fever.  Not enough of a fever to cause her to cancel plans with her best friend, nor enough to choose to stay home instead of seeing Wicked with me.  It was just enough of a fever for her to demand peppermint tea from Starbucks before the show and to try to get me to run down and buy her concessions during the show’s intermission. 

I agreed to the peppermint tea, but refused the snacks.  WebMD didn’t say Twizzlers can help reduce a fever or soothe a sore throat. 

“You don’t care that I’m sick!” was the not-unexpected response.

The next day, she announced, “Mom, I have strep throat.”

“Really? And this is based on….”

“I looked up my symptoms, and I have all the symptoms of strep.”

I felt her forehead.  Not even slightly warm this time.  “You don’t have strep.”

“Why not?”

“For one, you don’t have a fever anymore.  This isn’t strep.”

“Mom, I’m really sick!  You have to take me the doctor!”

I wanted to laugh, but didn’t.  WebMD strikes again, I thought.

Being the unsung dramatic actress that she is, my daughter did not let the strep thing go until I finally agreed to take her to her pediatrician.

The nurse checked her temperature (normal), ears (uncongested) and throat (slightly reddish but otherwise unremarkable), and then asked, “So what’s been going on with you?” 

My daughter began reciting the list of symptoms of strep throat from WebMD.

 “Okay, honey, but is that what’s going on with you?”

“Yes!”

The nurse took a throat culture.  We waited the required five minutes for the results.

“Good news!  It’s not strep.  There’s a nasty throat virus going around, but it typically clears up in about 3-5 days, which is about where you are now.  So you should be able to go to school on Monday.”

I shook my head.  It cost me $55 for the doctor’s office to confirm the “nothing’s wrong with you” diagnosis that I had made in my living room.  My daughter felt vindicated by the mention of “throat virus.”  I thought of my mother, who would have blown sulfur powder down her throat and made her drink two tablespoons of cod liver oil.

I gave my daughter the “don’t self-diagnose using WebMD” speech afterwards, but I don’t hold out much hope.  After all, she’s a kid with an Internet connection and access to a site that helps reinforce her belief that she’s much smarter than Mom.  I just hope she doesn’t self-diagnose herself into hospice care before she makes it out of 8th grade.

whose tubes are these?

Tanji6 Comments

While still in the hospital, after I gave birth to my second child, I had the fleeting thought that maybe I should have my tubes tied. I approached the subject with my doctor and she didn’t give my semi-request a second thought. “In order for me to have done that for you at 27,” she said, “you would have had to have asked a LONG time ago!” By a long time ago, I suppose she meant eight or nine months. She did the right thing, because although I talked big stuff about not wanting any more children, I completely planned, and currently cannot imagine my life without, my third, and final, child.

This last time around, I was adamant the entire pregnancy. My doctor got to the point where she just recited my request for me on her way into the room during regular visits. As it happened however, she was on vacation when I went into labor three weeks early. I ended up with a very frank, satirical, smug surgeon. It didn’t bother me just how dry and tired he clearly was, because I was in “third baby mode.” I was quite certain that I was an old pro at this point and all would be well. Somewhere after the epidural it occurred to me however that I had forgotten to bring up the tubal ligation. I stared up at my c-section team in a panic and blurted out the big news. My first response came from my surgeon, who I later affectionately likened to Larry David. He told me, “well you know this is a Catholic Hospital and they adopt policies which are generally against that procedure.” I was immediately flippant, if the Catholics wanted to frown on me for giving birth to only three kids they could go right ahead. Sorry, but the epidural had set in by that point and I was about as frank as he was after that.

The one-two punch was concluded by the only black female attendant in the room. She blurted out that, “because I was on Medicaid I would not be covered for that procedure.” Now I was certain I must have been on drugs. Thankfully, Larry David checked her and told her I had Aetna and I didn’t have to black out on her real quick before my baby was born.

It was finally settled, not only would my insurance cover it, my regular OB had it written in my chart that I was serious about tying those knots and it was taken care of. It left me wondering though, how is it that birth control is still left in the hands of others in today’s fouth-wave-feminist age? How much voice do we really have in the “control” of our bodies and birthing plans? Particularly when it would be far less painful if our male partners put forth the effort!  I wonder if the Catholics would sneer at that snip as well?

And So It Begins…

Benee12 Comments

 

 

Garvey's 1st Day on Earth

 I knew from the moment we decided upon his name, Garvey, he was going to be someone special. Of course, every parent feels this way about his/her child(ren). But, something in my soul knew he was meant to be. We didn’t plan him, he just kinda made his way to us. We fought a lot, but he brought us together. In the saddest moments I’ve had recently, his smile, semi-funny-but-not-really-funny jokes made me laugh, his dancing has kept me entertained… he’s been my rock. He is going to go far in life… His life has purpose!

Natural-Born Revolutionary

And now, he is going to school.  I discussed here the struggles we were having finding somewhere for him to go to school. On Friday, we finally found out where he is going to school and it happens to be one of the better schools in NYC. It’s conveniently located a few blocks from his father’s job, and my research tells me this is exactly where I want my son to begin his educational path to greatness. I’m quite pleased. He will live with his father during the week and stay with me on weekends. We worked this out in his best interest and I anticipate his success with this arrangement.

And so we’re opening the next chapter: School.

If I cry one more time…

New school clothes: Check
Fresh haircut: Check
Thomas and Friends Bookbag: Check
The Ability to Wipe Himself After #2: Check

Lately, I’ve just been watching him, this firey ball of energy who loves hugs, kisses, trains, and Michael Jackson. This beautiful prince whose future is so bright, this man-child I made. I’m just in awe of him sometimes… I get caught up in loving him so much, it can be overwhelming.

I’m ready. I’m ready to let my baby go out into the outer world we call school. I’m ready for him to make new friends, have new experiences, and be in the care of someone responsible for a bulk of his education. I’m ready for the cuts and bruises. I’m ready for pictures of turkeys made of his handprint. I’m ready for his first written sentence. I’m ready for him to say, “Mommy, don’t kiss me in front of my friends!” I’m ready for everything that comes with taking this next major step…

…I think.

*sniff*

I'm A Star

Yes, Baby… you are

Fathers and Daughters

ORJ13 Comments

I still remember his deliberate movements; his even-paced, leisurely walks around the block in the late afternoon sun; the slow grin into which he would break when I read to him in French.  At 66, my grandfather was not the authoritarian he had been when raising my mother.  With my sister and me, he was all warmth, his smiles and displays of affection a constant reminder of his approval of us.  He visited during the summers, and the room in which he stayed was named “chambre de Pere-Pere” even after he returned to Haiti at the end of his visits.  After he died, my mother summarily announced that the room was no longer “Grandfather’s room;” instead, it was just the TV room.  She wore only black and white for one year to mourn his passing, despite the fact that their relationship had not been everything she wanted it to be.  One of the first colored items of clothing she wore when her grieving period was complete was an embroidered short-sleeved linen shirt that had belonged to him.  Even now, when I see men wearing Guayaberas in the streets of Miami, I am reminded of my Pere-Pere.

For reasons at once complex and simple, my daughter does not know her maternal grandfather; they have never met.  My relationship with my father is strained; and the offenses that have passed between us are made heavier by our cultural differences.  A West African man, he is comfortable neither acknowledging the pain he has caused his children, nor spontaneously reaching out to connect with his daughters; because he is an elder, we must contact him first, and keep contacting him even if he chooses not to respond.  An American girl, I’m well versed in pop psychology; I know that toxic people, even parents, do not deserve space in my life.  As a result, I’ve made peace with the distance between us, no longer needing his validation.  We talk on occasion, but the conversations are often muddled by his insistence on settling the score, noting what I did or did not do that requires his reprimand.

It’s okay, necessary even, to give myself what my father has not been able to give me.  But what of that which my father could give to my daughter?  I would love to marvel at his ability to be tender and understanding with her in a way he cannot be with his first-born, much like my mother probably marveled at my grandfather’s soft touch with my sister and me.  There must be something liberating about being a grandparent; freed from the burden of active parenting, grandparents are only expected to offer love, unfettered by the messy complications of disappointment in failure, or anxious hope for success.  And just as easily, grandchildren offer only love in return, aware that a grandparent’s love is more truly unconditional than that of their parents.

I think about the possibilities of that unconditional love between grandfathers and granddaughters when I do call him; I am always hopeful that our conversation will finally be less about who wronged whom, and more about catching up.  My daughter babbles cheerfully in the background, and instantly his voice softens.  “Oh, I can hear her,” he says wistfully.  “She must be so big, now.”

Black to School

Dr. Mama Esq.5 Comments

A new year has began. I look around me in my Civil Procedure class, and of the 60 or so students, I am one of four black people. Not a bad number, you might think. But I know better. Just because they are black, doesn’t mean we’re fighting the same battle. I’m just sayin.’ I don’t know them, so I assume I’m fighting alone until experience tells me otherwise.

The class begins with a discussion of Walker v. City of Birmingham, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967. Already my stomach is sinking. Anything about Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s is not really something I want to talk about on the first day. Not when I’m surrounded by fresh-out-of-undergrad-white-folks-who-have-never-paid-a-bill-and-really-believe-they-are-here-based-on-their-own-“merit”. Shit.

But in it we go. Short law lesson: The case is about Walker et al, with the et. al. including MLK Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, appealing a decision by a lower Alabama court. The city had an ordinance on the books that gave it broad discretion in who to issue a permit to. Bull Connor refused them a permit to march twice during the Easter weekend in 1963. They started small protests anyway, so the city got a judge to issue an injunction – an order that said they were not allowed to march or protest in any way. Now the ordinance was pretty unconstitutional, and the injunction just mimicked what the ordinance said. But the ordinance is a statute, and the injunction is an order of the court.

The men marched anyway. Bull Connor and his police arrested them and jailed them, of course. Then the city filed a motion for contempt of court, because the men violated the injunction. And that’s the issue that went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court upheld the contempt order. You cannot violate an injunction, no matter how unconstitutional it is, out of respect for the “rule of law.” You must challenge the injunction, in front of the court who ordered it, before you violate it.

Fine. I love legal analysis. Of course, there are reasons to agree with the court’s ruling, and reasons to disagree. There were dissenting opinions.

What gave me pause in this class was that after we’d discussed the case, the professor decides that we all need to understand the “context” of the case. Generally, I’m all for that. I’m a sociologist; I believe context is paramount all the time. But when you are the 1/4 black contingent, and suddenly huge powerpoint photos of black people, black children being hosed, attacked by dogs, beaten with billy clubs, and inhumanely jailed, you wonder if “context” is really the right word.

The next slide put up is Martin Luther King Jr. sitting in that Birmingham jail, writing his Birmingham letter, and the professor asks the class, what would you have done in this man’s situation, and then adds on quickly, well, of course this is a trick question because these images being projected into living rooms across America is what led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And everyone laughs.

But to me, what made it a trick question was the fact that these people would have never been in MLK’s position, never in his position to put black children on the street because all the black adults were in jail, never in MLK’s position to break the law in homage to justice over order, never in MLK’s position to stare down water hoses and dogs because their skin color would never have been black. It is not a hypothetical they have to truly contend with.

But for me, and the millions of students that go into classrooms this year, the hypothetical feels real. A girlfriend of mine told me a story of her six-year-old who was taught about segregation and MLK in his first grade classroom. This mother is very light-skinned, and her child brown-skinned. After the lesson at school, the child came home and told his mother that if things ever “went back,” he’d have to leave her. He might also have to “fight, like MLK did.” Why? Because the teacher didn’t take any account of the fact that in teaching this “lesson,” the only black child in the classroom might take it literally, and not place it in its historical context.

In other lessons, this teacher, attempting to be “historically correct, not politically correct” had black children act out being slaves on a field trip to a plantation while white children looked on. This teacher bound the hands of two black girls in a lesson about slavery order to make it more lively. Another teacher had black children create fugitive slave posters of themselves.*

While black parents have fought hard to have “our” stories told in schools, something has gone horribly wrong in implementation. Has your child been the recipient of this psychological attack disguised as a history lesson? What is the alternative for teaching all children about the sordid legacy of oppression in this country without making the historically oppressed relive their oppression?

Beef

Salina6 Comments

Ok. The straw has broken the proverbial camel’s back.

I’ve sat in on one to many conversations with mothers going on and on about their child’s over the top behavior. As has been the case lately, I’m the lone Black mother in the room, conscious that  my words, tone, and facial expressions will probably be misconstrued… Yes, I am all too aware of the Sapphiric machinations that non-Black folk tend to expect from Black women.  One example that comes to mind- I expressed my frustration about another teacher, telling two White colleagues that I needed to go and have a talk with the woman. My male colleague says “Uh-oh, it’s about to be on up in here!”, with what HE intended to be Black girl affectations…

My liberated self (ego) won’t allow me to code switch when in mixed social company. Soooo, when I found myself a part of a recent discussion about parenting with a small group of White women, I couldn’t do anything but be who I am. When asked “what do you think?” about an idea, I gave an answer contrary to what was expected, and dare I say appropriate. Silence followed my response. One woman then offered a “compliment”, “I love that you keep it real. That’s so great!”

Later in the conversation,  another parent described a situation with her daughter, a precocious toddler who I’d say has some serious behavior issues. The mother went on laughing, describing how her “sweetie” doesn’t like her preschool teacher, and made a public announcement. Her “sweetie” doesn’t like to eat vegetables. Her “sweetie” doesn’t take naps because she doesn’t want to. And the piece de resistance: one day her little angel was very angry because she didn’t want to put something away and so when mommy took it, mommy got pimp slapped. Ok, maybe not pimp slapped, but you get the picture: the little girl hit the mommy multiple times, yelling and screaming.   Now up until this point, I held my tongue, and kept my facial composure.  But I couldn’t contain myself, I interjected- something akin to the “need to physically exorcise a demon out of your spawn”.    Dead. Silence.  The women were absolutely MORTIFIED that I would suggest such a thing. They each went on to explain why any sort of physical aggression toward a child was unacceptable.

I couldn’t help but feel alien…I suddenly wished for the community of my Sister friends.  They would understand. None of us are big on spanking our children…I didn’t mean it literally, but I didn’t want to have to explain to these women. They just didn’t get it, the unspoken understanding that certain things are unacceptable. Of course I don’t mean brutalize your child –  but I KNOW that in a circle of my Sisters, there would have been the chorus of “girrrrl” and talk about “breaking them off something” and “oh no! it ain’t goin’ down like that!” – and then laughter, and the…solidarity and understanding…