From Pine View Farm

Dread Locks 0

Elizabeth Wellington, after noting that the winners of all three major U. S. beauty contests this year are black women, find herself dismayed that the continuing effort to disparage, discourage, and disrespect* black persons’ natural hair. A snippet.

It’s to the point that last month, Los Angeles Democratic Sen. Holly J. Mitchell was compelled to introduce a bill in the California state legislature that bans schools and workplaces from writing dress codes that forbid braids, twists, and other hairstyles that are suited to a black person’s natural hair. For years, Mitchell argued, black people have had to use untoward techniques and harmful chemicals to manipulate their hair into unnatural states that are acceptable to a Eurocentric beauty standard to not just fit into the status quo, but also to be considered clean and well-groomed.

The law, appropriately referred to as the C.R.O.W.N. law, an acronym for Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural hair, passed the California State Senate and is now on its way to the State Assembly. Mitchell introduced it, she said, because she was weary of seeing black children and teenagers — like Buena Vista wrestler Andrew Johnson, whose locks were sheared at the behest of match referee Alan Maloney — humiliated “because their natural hair was deemed unruly or a distraction to others.

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*I think that’s the first time I’ve used that neologism, either verbally written, but somehow it seems appropriate.

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