All posts in Music

Once again… we’re talkin’ bout good and bad hair.

Along with Spike Lee’s ‘Straight and Nappy’ musical piece in School Daze (1988) and Chris Rock’s Good Hair documentary (2009), African Americans’ hair issues lingered for decades in the media. With each generation, comes new epiphanies of “how I never knew what my real hair looked like” and “how I discovered my own hair could be beautiful.” It’s a wonder why we don’t keep our young black girls far away from the television. At least, so that we don’t have to have this same conversation about black hair and beauty as each generation of women comes of age.

Clearly, the African American woman’s psyche and self-esteem is deeply affected by too many media images of black women with long weaves of straight hair. It also stems from parents living in white neighborhoods, putting children in all white schools, and having to explain to those children why their unique appearance compared to the rest of the kids they grow up with is beautiful and special despite being the outlier.

“There’s a lot of profit to be made from that pain” said Melissa Harris-Perry, Tulane University political science professor, author, and columnist for The Nation magazine.

On her MSNBC show, she sat down with actress Nicole Ari Parker of Broadway’s Streetcar Named Desire, University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler, cultural critic Joan Morgan, and CurlyNikki.com founder Nikki Walton to discuss the economics and politics of black hair.

CONTINUE READING…