Did you know that beauticians are trained to not discuss politics, race or religion while they perm, flip and or crimp your hair?
Barbershops and beauty shops are places where black folk discuss and sometimes debate politics, surely neighbors, breakups and make-ups. Similar to churches, these are places where the races separate. In the salon we can, as they say, “let our hair down” or even let down our hair extensions.
On my recent visit to a beauty school at Northwest Plaza, my student stylist and I were in the midst of a discussion about Barack Obama, a hot topic anywhere. With the hair dryer blowing, I heard a voice yell across the room, “Y’all gonna have to change that conversation. Students are not allowed to discuss politics, race or religion in here.”
My immediate reaction was, “I know she is not talking to me.”
I settled in and thought, “This is America, not a communist regime; I have a right to discuss whatever I want.”
Moreover, our boys are fighting a war now, allegedly in order to provide Iraqis with the very freedoms we enjoy here in America, while our freedoms are being eroded every day, little by little. At one time, after 9/11, the political climate was so intense, if anyone dared to speak out against George W. Bush you were seen as unpatriotic.
Now the beauty shop is no longer our safe haven.
This supervisor went on to say, while pointing in my face, “You can talk about whatever you want, but he can’t,” meaning the student.
After this, she began hovering near us, monitoring the conversation like an overseer on the plantation. Using examples of Dred Scott, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – great people who spoke up and out against injustice – I tried to show the student stylist the ridiculous and demeaning nature of this rule. He refused to comment, acting like an apathetic coward.
I ceased all conversation, just sitting like a Fetch, the empty-headed Negro actor. After my stylish finished, I thanked him (without a tip), then said I would not return. When I got ready to leave, I was asked not to come back. Kicked out! It’s true that you get what you pay for – that’s the lesson I got out of this.
Ultimately, the Big Brother policies set forth in this pseudo salon are intended to limit and reduce the black voice. Supreme among the freedoms we have earned as blacks in America is the freedom of speech, a prized freedom.
Case in point: Barack Obams’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah White, certainly felt that among his people he could share his deepest, most disconcerting thoughts – in his church, with his people. But he found out that freedom is not free.
Exercising your freedoms may cause some discomfort, it may cause you to lose something of value, but none the less, it’s worth fighting for. From here on out, I will remain loyal to my stylist around my corner in my community.
