Another Sad Hair Song

So again, I'm among a group of black women recently and one of them decides she's going to school me on what I need to do to properly wear my hair curly.(It's funny how people want to tell you how to do your own hair. Like you haven't lived with it for years and tried every single product on the market for the past 3 decades.)

Anyway, she puts Motions setting lotion in my hair and rolls it in rods. A half hour later, she takes it out and it looks cute! Two hours later its frizzier then when we started. Ugh. Not that what she did didn't work, its just that I know my hair never stays and I've never found a product that can tame its half-straight half-curly tendencies without weighing it down.

My friend's intentions were good but my larger issue here is that I feel that black women look at mixed women like "projects" sometimes in the hair department, when each of us has a totally different hair type. I guess it's how people with dreadlocks feel when people ask them if they wash their hair? People want to know about the unknown and often (wrongly) assume that mixed hair is easy to manage. I know, I know, there's "mixed chicks" and others out there, but they have yet to work for me. I'll keep trying for now and continue to let my darker sisters have their fun.

Barack Obama in CA

The president is in California this week. With him so close (yet so far away), it's interesting to see the excitement on people's faces when he steps in front of a podium. When he rolls up his sleeves, people scream like they're at a Michael Jackson concert. I just marvel at what he's doing for the image of black people in this country and also for mixed people.

People used to warn interracial couples "Please, think about the children!" before they pro-created.

Now, will people say "Please, think about the children!... They could be president!"....?

Racial Ambiguity

Is it an advantage? After taking a series of straight-hair, curly-hair pictures, I realize that my straight hair gives me much more of an ethnic look than curly hair. Rather, that curly hair stretches the realms of my ethnic universe. Is this good in the business of Hollywood or just confusing for casting directors who love to put you in a box? I am hoping it will be advantageous, but for now, I think it's been tough for people to place me. Just some random thoughts.

Featured Features

So lots of bi-racial people have a mixture of facial (and body) features that are typically associated with one race or another. For me, I have my father's German nose, my mother's African-American lips and my grandmother's Native American cheekbones. So how is it that we are so quickly identified as "Black?" Also, how is it that we are able to identify other mixed people so easily? Perhaps we see the combination of features as an immediate clue that something is different...

So how does it affect our lives when we have more "white" or "black" features? Do mixed people with "blacker"features get accepted more easily with black people? Are they discriminated against more by non-blacks? Who knows, but I do think that it's much more confusing for people to assume someone is white and then find out that they are bi-racial than the reverse.

How many times have we heard bi-racial people tell stories of being in mixed crowds, only to hear someone tell an anti-black joke? The offender usually has no idea that the person has black heritage--or they simply figure that they're so light they won't care! That has definitely happened to me. White people feel that they can "confide" their racist remarks in me because I'm not "so" black. "You know what I mean..." they say. "You're not THAT black..." they say.

How utterly offensive and sadly ignorant. We've come so far but we have a long way to go.