I have seen a glimmer hope that one of the chains of the legacy of slavery is loosening! Which one? The notion of good hair and bad hair.
You may recall me writing about my husband’s locks. Oh, how beautiful they were, and then he had to go and get them cut off. He says, as a landscaper, they were just too hot. I thought about explaining to him all the ways in which women suffer for their beauty, but I held off. I was vocal in my disappointment but equally vocal in my understanding.
We’ve since discovered that my husband’s four-year process of getting his hair to lock had quite the impact on our youngest son. He was only a toddler when my husband began to let his hair grow out into a small ‘fro and then wore cornrows for about a year. After that, he wore twists before the locks just grew and grew.
It’s the only hair style that our six-year-old ever really recalls on his father. When he did cut his locks last year and came home all but bald, our son ran away from him! I realized later that it was quite a change for Marcus. It was like he didn’t even recognize him.
My husband and I knew that not everyone thought highly of his hair. I’m reminded of something a comedian said several years ago to an audience member who had locks: “Oh, now you NEVER plan to get a job in America, do you!” Without this becoming a PBS special, the hair style wasn’t a hair style at all; it was a way of life, a sign of rebellion against the system and The Man! But now, the thick sections of uncombed, unprocessed hair are a bona fide style.
Almost immediately after my husband had me cut them off last summer, he decided to grow them out again! This month, he has reached the stage of preparation where he is getting his hair braided into cornrows. He says he’ll never cut them off again, and that’s just fine with me. But apparently, it’s especially pleasing to our baby boy.
Patrick came home with the standard style for cornrows. It was nothing intricate. They just ran from the front to the back. Marcus immediately noticed his father’s new hairdo! His reaction? He didn’t run away this time. He looked at him and said, “Now you’ve got good hair.”
If that isn’t a turning of the tide, a loosening of the chains that bind, I don’t know what is!