Thursday, August 27, 2009

As a bald man...

...I really don't have a lot to say on the subject of hair, except that it's tremendously overrated. So I only skimmed this article on African-American hair:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/fashion/27SKIN.html?ref=fashion

But one paragraph did catch my eye:

Anyone who thought such preconceptions were outdated would have been reminded otherwise by some negative reactions to the president’s 11-year-old daughter, Malia Obama, who wore her hair in twists while in Rome this summer. Commenters on the conservative blog Free Republic attacked her as unfit to represent America for stepping out unstraightened.

I actually visited that blog briefly (it was pretty scary), and it only reinforced the impression I have that some people in this country--plain and simply--aren't comfortable with a black family in the White House. To which a therapist would probably say: "That's your issue."

2 comments:

James said...

You don't need to charge by the 50 minutes to have that response to racism in America.

mtracy said...

Agreed.