The "Nappy Hair" Affair

I first read this article in the St. Petersburg Florida Times, and posted on my first website in Geocities in 1999.  It was written by a black columnist whose name I don't remember.  I thought I'd post it here in light of the current controversy surrounding Nicki Minaj.

The "Nappy Hair" Affair


A third grade teacher in Brooklyn, New York wanted to
help her students of African and Latino descent build
some self-esteem. So she introduced them to"Nappy
Hair," a book written by Carolivia Herron, who is an
American of African descent, as well as an assistant
English professor at California State University.

Professor Herron wrote the book in celebration of the
unbreakable spirit of a little girl and her untameable
hair. The book describes the young girl as having
"the kinkiest, the nappiest, the fuzziest, the most
screwed up, squeezed up, knotted up, tangled up, twisted
up, nappiest hair..."

It has been reported that the tale is, in fact, based
on stories created by Professor Herron's uncle, about
her and her own nappy hair, of which she is uncommonly
proud. It has also been reported that few of those
parents had any children in Ms. Sherman's class, and
that none of them had read the book at all.

But the teacher, Ruth Sherman, was totally unprepared
for the consequences of her action. She was taken out
of her classroom and transferred to an office job, and
some of the parents of students have threatened her life.

Why did this happen, one might wonder. Was it because
of the teacher's skin shading? Or that she had the utter
audacity to want to teach self-esteem to children not of
her so-called "race?" The answer is, both and more.

It seems that Ms. Sherman, in choosing that book, walked
into a firestorm of racial self-hatred in the United States.
Since slave days, the standard of beauty and acceptance that
has been brainwashed into our heads is having light skin
and straight hair. Even now, there are many older Americans
of direct African descent who remember their parents forcing
them to get their hair burned and straightened, in the name
of "beauty" and "acceptance."

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page wrote, "The
'Black is Besutiful' movement of the late 1960's tried to
liberate black Americans from the tyranny of the hot comb,
a lsting symbol of our oppressive fealty to European
standards of beauty. But the durability of hot combs and
other black hair straightening products shows that black
subservience to European standards of beauty remains
largely unbroken, especially for James Brown and the
Rev. Al Sharpton."

Even though the protesting parents completely missed the
point, the children in Ms. Shermans' class loved the book,
according to school officials. And interestingly, Newsweek
reported, "Even after all the commotion, some parents
admitted they still hadn't read the book."