That Sound You Hear Is Politics Trickling Down
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HAIR!
I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty
Oily, greasy, fleecy, shining
Gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen
Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!
The Cliche’ is that all politics is local, but I’m convinced otherwise: that nearly all of it trickles down from the various PR firms and lobbying organizations and pressure groups and parties. I’m convinced you can easily notice it when the identical phrases and buzzwords and tropes fall from the sky like hailstones in a tropical thunderstorm. Last month John Oliver devoted most of an hour to an emotional diatribe about African Americans being fired from their jobs or not hired at all for wearing natural or genetically predetermined, hairstyles. (I find the concept of genetic predetermination just a bit racist, don’t you?)
If I were a cynic I would remember growing up in a world of strict dress codes. I would remember being forced to cut my hair and shave off a mustache to work at an insurance agency in the 60s. I remember being shouted at walking down Chicago’s LaSalle Street in a Brooks Brothers suit because of my hair. I remember restrictive high school dress codes. No jeans, no pants for girls, no shirts without collars. There could be serious consequences for having long hair too – in school or out – so is it really another bit of proof of the malice of white people if high schools and businesses are still trying to impose arbitrary standards that seem out of date to students?
But now I’ve begun to see even more hyperbolically worded emails alleging that it’s now illegal for black people to have the hairstyles that nature forces them to have as though it were nothing but racism behind a company not wanting a receptionist or representative with face tattoos, for instance or hair topiary of devil horns. That’s not true. If the Fire Department doesn’t want you to wear a beard – you shave. You want to represent a company, a business, you dress conservatively. You dress for the job if you want to represent some fortune 500 company less interested in being woke than in not being broke.
The hair war is an organized, professionally run campaign. It’s not some “grassroots” or grass-fed movement. It can’t go very far, I think because I don’t see much future in any movement that dictates that a presidential press secretary or a supreme court judge or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or President, for instance, have special and race-based relief from standards of dress. It’s another attempt to prove that racism is everywhere and “systemic.” It’s propaganda.
If there’s a reference point to look at, simply look at how nearly 100% of Africans and their American descendants, who here and abroad, maintain a variety of styles perfectly acceptable and often quite attractive to a worldwide audience. Black, after all, is beautiful and that’s no hyperbole. Just look around you.
I don’t know how far this one will go since there as so many vastly more important issues of all sorts, but surely anyone who has been to countries with predominantly African populations will tell you that it’s not the kind of freak show you may find in an American high school; either in class or out by the dumpsters with paper bags full of glue. It’s not elitism, it’s not racism – it’s civilization.
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“Think of Tomorrow. The past can’t be mended”
-Confucious-
I’m very wary of making generalizations from incidents that may or may not be representative, but I’m comfortable in saying the cultivated division (and I think it is being cultivated) creates opportunities for unscrupulous people to profit from it. The voice from the mountain says that slavery in the US was the greatest injustice ever done – ever. We’re told we have to be told because that fact has been suppressed. We’re told never mind the that 70 – 80 million people killed in WWII – another 20 million in China and a few million is SE Asia and in Africa. We’re not told what a small percentage of that happened in North America. We’re not told the toll slavery took on indigenous peoples in North and South America. We’re not told about the 15 or more centuries of murder and oppression of minority populations in Europe. We’re not told about brutal slavery in Africa or the brutal exterminations that fed the market for slaves. We’re not told about Pacific Islanders taken as slaves. We’re not told about slavery in Germany. We’re not told about Chinese and Korean slaves taken by the Empire of Japan. We’re not told about the disgusting treatment of East Asians ( internment, expulsion and lynching) in the US. We have, of course heard of Tulsa, (but not Roseville or Ocoee) without which all Americans would be financially equal.
No, it was only here and only by and because of White people and white people don’t know or want to hide it and have to have the guilt administered orally and rectally all the time until we’re woke, which despite the dialect reference to being awakened, often seems like being stunned into a coma by the severity of the onslaught.
Sorry – this hurts when you’re someone who has been and was raised to be a Liberal humanist. It’s painful to hear people some of us have worked to help calling all who help hypocrites. Again, I’m very much not against Equality and human rights, but when one is faced with reciting the Catechism or being marched through the streets as scapegoats, it’s hard to care as much as you once did.
On dress and general appearance codes: when I first started in law enforcement I had to have a short haircut, no facial hair, defined in the policy manual. We weren’t allowed to have visible tattoos, such as on the arms, neck, face. We had to stay in shape. No fat or short guys allowed. The supreme court, in 1977, with Dothard vs Rawlinson, struck down the height requirement as being unconstitutional. In the ’90s some departments allowed officers to have facial hair, which I hate on a uniform cop.
In point of fact, over a 40-year career, I have never had to run more than about 100 feet in a foot chase. I’ve never had to scale a fence. I have had to roll around in the mud, blood, and beer, when arresting a bad guy, and have been stabbed, had my front teeth knocked out, and damaged my back, which has lasted for 20 years and is still present. So, there’s that. I agree with you on everything you say re: African Americans and hairstyles. While some may look outrageous to us, for them it’s part of their culture and we don’t need to be interfering with that. Politics does indeed trickle down.
I don’t have the right to tell someone who looks like they just escaped from Barnum and Baily they can’t work, but why does anyone have a right to work for me despite it?
Great article and one that strikes home. In 2002, I told my second in command, a black woman, her hair looked really nice. She told me she had washed it. I responded by asking: don’t you wash your hair often? She said black people can’t wash their hair often because they have a scalp condition. I said ‘that’s interesting,’ and went about my business. Several months later I received a notice from Internal Affairs that I was under investigation for discrimination due to the hair conversation. I was gobsmacked! What? It was just a conversation. No one was insulted. Apparently, she was because she wanted my job, and to get it I had to be eliminated. The big boss was terrified of black people and wanted them to think he believes everything they say because he is a fair person. The pressure on me was so great I took early retirement and she got my job. So there’s that!
I had a similar incident, only my 2 assistants, both black, charged me with the murder of one black worker. Fortunately the alleged victim testified that he was not dead, and that in fact had it not been for me saving his life from a heart attack he would have been. Anyhow, it affected me enough to leave that position, and one of the instigators got my job and the other moved up into his position.
The one that got my job lived less than 6 months (35 years old, massive heart attack, it was a stressful position and he was not at all qualified) and the other was in Federal prison as a result of an investigation I had started.
Karma!
Karma is right. Unfortunately for me, it changed my opinion of certain people, after being a victim of reverse discrimination. Prior to this incident, I didn’t have a racist bone in my body. Now I am more careful.