The Navig8or Newsletter July 2011

Greetings Afrikans

I have been locked down with some new projects, but have come up for air to bring you the latest newsletter.

In this issue:

1. Hair Today...Gone Tomorrow - A review of Chris Rock's film 'Good Hair'

I recently watched the documentary 'Good Hair' by Chris Rock. We have had it at home for a quite a while, however my wife persuaded me to watch it with her. I then had a conversation with a real elder and his insights sparked me into writing this newsletter.

On one level the film was a typically superficial, comedic offering, however on another level it unintentionally revealed a level of psychological, cultural, economic and spiritual pathology, manifested in a range of rationalisations and behaviours that could only be described as confused, strange and downright bizarre.

In summary, the stimulus for the film was supposedly Chris Rock's young daughter asking him why she did not have 'good hair'.  Tangentially, I read an article in which his wife (who does not appear in the film) was expressing some confusion as to why their daughter does not love her beautiful hair. Perhaps it is the twelve inch weave that Mrs Rock sports that is causing confusion and self-hate in her child's mind! That's the nub of it isn't it. Saying one thing which is contradicted by your behaviour. I love being Afrikan, I just don't want to look too Afrikan! Anyway, let's move on and explore some of the key issues raised by this unintentionally important film.

Afrikan Psychopathology
Let's get straight to the heart of the matter and deal with this issue; that for some of you will be difficult and painful to read. Some readers will have the following reactions:
- You're a man you don't know what it is like
- I do what I want and nobody influences me
- I'm unsubscribing from your list!

All I would ask is that before you react, you think. Try to consider the arguments I am going to put and see if their is any logic or coherence to them. If there isn't then fine, do 
whatever you first thought of doing. However if there is a logic and coherence, reflect upon what needs to change.

Question. Why do we almost all agree that skin bleaching, forms of plastic surgery that de-Afrikanise our features, wearing blue contact lenses etc. are all forms of self-hatred, but then pretend that Afrikan women using toxic chemicals such as Sodium Hydroxide to straighten their hair or spending large amounts of money (I did not realise how much weaves cost until watching the film!) to wear plastic wigs or weave in other people's hair is qualitatively different?  

These behaviours are all about looking less Afrikan and more acceptable (to Caucasians and other Afrikans). I know that the convenience argument is the thin barracade behind which assaulting Afrikan hair is defended,  however let's be honest about a few things. When a sister 'goes natural' she is almost certain to experience the following:

- A hostile reaction and maybe even insults from family and 'friends' 
- Less Afrikan male sexual attention (we are going to addresss the role of Afrikan men in this whole issue later) and nearly zero compliments on her hair 
- Hostility in the workplace since Afrikan hair is considered 'unprofessional' by most Caucasians and Afrikans. If you work in the voluntary sector, Arts or Public sector (up to a certain level) you can often get away with Afrikan hair! 

None of the above is about convenience. It is about the deep detestation and hostility to any form of Afrikan non-assimilation. Be clear, a female bearing Afrikan hair is viewed by Caucasians as a form of defiance and cultural resistance. Hair is political. It is not just about style and fashion. Why do you think natural hair became symbolic in th 1960s. Of course for too many, such as James Brown, it was just opportunistic bandwagoning.

I have witnessed:
- An Afrikan woman being complimented and made to feel special (by Afrikan, Asian and Caucasian women) when she came into the workplace with her hair newly straightened. I had never seen her complimented during all the time her hair was natural.
- A dark skinned Afrikan girl, who was sometimes referred to as 'Toast' being told by other teenage girls, 'Oh, your hair looks decent now' after breaking her hair straightening virginity (well this seems to be a rite of passage for most Afrikan women. A sort of symbol of move from childhood to womanhood). I have come to understand that Afrikan hair is stressed, hence why it needs relaxing, but did not realise it was also indecent!!
- A look of total shock and repulsion on a 'conscious' brother's face when he saw a sister he knew who had cut off her chemicalised hair.

And, much much more...

One of the really good things about 'Good Hair' is the honesty of so many of the participants. Many are unapologetic and open about their contempt for Afrikan hair. As an Afrikan
shop assistant working in a Korean owned hair shop; said to Chris Rock, who was trying to sell her boss Afrikan hair for weaves, "Nobody wants nappy hair nowadays". Also, I did not know that a nickname for the white (which is a fitting colour) hair straightening cream is 'Creamy Crack'.  As one sister who was in the hair chemist's chair noted, "it's harder to get off relaxer than it is to get off crack".

It's the foetuses next! - This is only half a joke. Chris Rock asked one hair chemist, what was the youngest child whose hair she had been asked to chemicalise. The hairdresser replied "18 months old"! That's when I fell off the settee. I am going to have to just say it plain. Putting that s*it in a baby's hair is a form of child abuse. As adults we can poison and abuse ourselves with toxins ranging from cigarettes, alcohol to McDonalds Happy Meals, but for a mother to be too damned lazy to care for her child's hair (the mother had told 
the hair chemist that "she couldn't do anything with it") is a shocking indictment of the degeneration of so many people who look like Afrikans. If you can't do anything with your child's hair, try this...LEAVE IT ALONE!! No child ever died from not having their hair pulled by a fine toothed comb. 

Let's ask ourselves another question. Why do so many Afrikans still experience emotions ranging from unease to contempt when they see an Afrikan woman in a blonde wig and yet this feeling would be less intense if she wore a black wig?

I would suggest that instinctively and subconsciously we recognise a sort of hierarchy of de-Afrikanisation or group negation. I won't call it self-negation since it is possible to feel good about yourself and hate being Afrikan. This is the problem with the 'Afrikan children in the West have low self-esteem' myth. They don't, most just hate being Afrikan. Of course we now see that most Black women now not only want to have straightened (usually long) hair, they also increasingly do not want to have black hair. The last few years have seen the increasing blonding of Black women's hair and their false hair; following the trend set by 'beauty icons' such as Beyonce.
So, in terms of levels of physical de-Afrikanisation we have created a hierarchy of acceptability, which; ranging from the most to the least acceptable is:

- Hair (with a sub-hierarchy of hair straightening, extensions, hair lightening [not further than p*ss blond colour], weaving and finally wigging) 
- Eye colour
- Surgery to change facial feature (nose and lips mainly) - A lot of Afrikans were quite happy with Michael Jackson's 'Off the Wall' look. After all who wants an Afrikan nose and lips. The hypocrites only started to complain when he drastically lightened his skin.
- Skin bleaching (this is about the only area where there is still widespread resistance to physical de-Afrikanisation)
 

Economic Madness and Colonisation
Can you guess how much getting a 'good weave' costs in the US? Some of you may know, particularly the sisters, but I was astonished. Chris Rock interviewed some everyday sisters in an everyday hairdressing salon. He asked the owner, resplendent in her wig with blue fringe, how much a weave such as the one she was sewing into her victim's (sorry customer) hair cost. She answered $1000!!!!!!!!! I kid you not. He asked some of the sisters waiting in the salon how much their weaves cost and they all concurred with the figure. There was one elderly woman who was a weave virgin and Chris Rock asked her why she was having it done now. She said "my children are grown up so now it is my time". It sounded like the weave was something from a 'bucket list'. You know the sort of thing, 100 things I want to do before I die. No. 1 get a weave. What was incredible was that these were not high powered executives. They were Afrikan women of average type financial means. One obese young sister did state proudly that she was a teacher who had been to grad school. She was sporting a browny, obvious looking weave. I mention the obesity since if many of the women in this film paid half as much attention to; and spent 10% as much money on their health as they do on their hair we would be in damned site better shape (pun intended) as a people.  To cap it all, the salon owner mentioned that she had a layaway plan for weaves! Man, we have totally lost our minds. 

There were some light skinned (this is important in understanding our self-hatred and beauty ideals) celebrity sisters who were interviewed throughout the length of the film and one 
of them admitted (actually she was not embarrassed) to paying up to $3500 for a single weave. At least the celebrities got what they wanted, which was a weave that did not look like a weave. Amongst these celebrities there was one sister who was in effect 'the natural hair spokesperson' for the film and she was Mixed Race and so had the 'advantage' of having naturally straighter hair than your average sister. This was a clever mechanism to undermine any argument in favour of natural hair.

No Romance Without Finance - Another revelation to me was the role weaves and hair play in the economics of relationships. Chris Rock asked some brothers in a barber shop
if they had ever looked at a sister's hair and thought 'I can't afford to maintain that weave', to which many of them nodded in agreement. Apparently, part of the relationship building process can involve a brother taking on weave support payments. Brothers. If a girlfriend with a weave asks you to accompany her to the hairdresser, be scared, be very scared. When you read the next article about the impact of the recession on Black Households you are going to fully comprehend the insanity of this behaviour, but more importantly the overwhelming power of our need to be accepted by Caucasians by becoming facsimiles of them.        

Out of India - As one sexually confused Black male hairdresser, with long straightened hair, said to Chris Rock "The money's in the weave". The documentary followed hair from it's owners' heads in India through the harvesting, packaging and exportation process, to the selling of the packaged weave to hair shops and hairdressers. The process as broadcast works like this:

• Hindu devotees have their heads shaved at temples as part of a ritual called Tonsure
• The hair is collected and bagged up by the Temple
• The temple sells the 'raw' hair to a middle man
• The middle man has low paid Indian women processing the hair. The processing involves delousing and debugging the hair. Combing it out and ensuring it is of the correct length (it has to be at least 14 inches long) and packaging bundles in platic wrappers.
• An agent travels from India to the US to sell the hair. In the film the agent was visiting shops/hairdressers with hair in a single suitcase. The contents of the suitcase was valued at $15,000. The Black hairdresser said the mark up on weaves for him was about 150%. There is obviously money in madness.
• Black women buy the hair or go straight to the hair dresser and pay to have the Hindu hair sewn in.
• Hey presto, the Black woman can swish and flick her hair like a Caucasian or a horse.
• Black woman feels whole and beautiful!

Of course the weave hair comes from many countries. Apparently some women prefer Malaysian hair, whilst others prefer Indian. In India, because of the stranglehold that the temples have over the hair market, due to the Tonsure ritual, some middle men have apparently resorted to cutting girls hair whilst they are sleeping. Hairnapping!!

Worn by, but not owned by Afrikans - In 'Good Hair' Chris Rock visited Dudley Hair Products, one of a handful of Afrikan owned  hair products manufacturers left in the US. Mr Dudley runs a training college and to his credit preaches a Garveyite economic philosophy to his students and refuses to sell his business to Caucasian corporations. He described how his fellow Black manufacturers had been systematically bought out and the film reflected upon how a previous Chairman of L'Oreal had predicted some years ago that in the future there would not be a single Black hair product manufacturer left in the US. So the Caucasian corporations have taken over the manufacturing whilst the Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis) have taken over the wholesale and retail. The documentary filmed at a huge hair convention held in Atlanta which is orgainsed by the biggest Black owned hair manufacturer. In a huge convention hall there were only four rows of stalls occupied by Black ownd businesses. 

Fiyah pan yu head, or Paying to be poisoned
One of the most interesting, if too brief, sections of the film looked at the toxicity of Sodium Hydroxide, which is commonly found in hair straightening products. Chris Rock interviewed a chemist who showed the effects of immersing a drinks can in Sodium Hydroxide for varying periods of time. After a few hours the can was seriously corroded by this powerful alkaline chemical. The chemist noted that repeated exposure to Sodium Hydroxide will lead to damage to the lining of the lungs and yet neither clients and particularly hairdressers wear masks when being exposed to this chemical. That horrible smell when the creamy crack is applied to hair is sulphur being released in a chemical reaction. We see Asians who own most of the nail parlours wearing masks when appplying the toxic chemicals used to stick on false nails and yet Black hairdressers are exposing themselves to poisons on a daily basis. The skin is semi-permeable and brain scans have shown that these hair straightening chemicals penetrate the hair folicles and both the epidermis and dermis and seep beneath the skin. Hair straightening chemicals have also been implicated in breast cancer as I detailed in my book Blue Skies for Afrikans. The film showed some of the superficial skin burns and damage caused by leaving these chemicals in for too long, no doubt in order to get the roots really straight.

Where Degeneracy rules
The worlds of fashion, hair and beauty are arenas in which degeneracy is the norm and 'Good Hair' did not disappoint us. At the aforementioned Hair convention in Atlanta they have the biggest Black hairdressing contest in the US. There were five finalists, three female andd two male. Both males were committed to anti-sexual behaviour (commonly referred to as homosexuality). The contest was won by the high heel boots wearing Black male. The equally camp botox injecting white male came second. His show featured a group of black women in skimpy underwear, which was not only further degradation of sisters, but also an extreme irony given his predilictions. It was quite disturbing to watch his negro women customers cooing and fawning over him and his 'growing hands' (in reference to his magical ability to make Black women's hair grow). There seems to be no area of their lives that negroes are unwilling to give up to non-Afrikans and no aspect of European behaviour they find unacceptable.           

The role of Afrikan Men
What has this got to do with Afrikan men. Like abortion, everything! Now that's got your attention. The pressure on Afrikans to look like, walk like, talk like and think like Europeans is ubiquitous (all pervasive) and ever present and the pressure to conform to European hair norms is one aspect of this. Since in most cultures women represent the epitome of beauty the pressure to look European is felt most acutely, but exclusively, by Afrikan women. The primary pressure comes from European culture and society whilst the secondary pressure comes from other Afrikan women and men. Afrikan men can help to decrease or increase this negative pressure. The role of Afrikan fathers is particularly important. We often talk about the importance of fathers in their sons' lives, but neglect at our peril the role of fathers in their daughters' lives. A father is the model of manhood for his daughter. He should set the benchmark that all potential suitors need to meet. He should reinforce his daughter's self-confidence and respect for herself. If you wonder why too many of our girls are ready to trade sex for fleeting affection it is often due to the absence of a postive father or father figure in their lives. 
Afrikan men help determine the group's female beauty ideal. When Afrikan men state or infer that they will only date Afrikan women with straightened hair they help to feed the monster of  de-Afrikanisation. I have heard Afrikan men moaning about racism in one breath and then  talking about how they prefer women with 'tall hair' or Indian looking with the next. To some extent Afrikan women wear the hair that Afrikan men desire. Given the so-called Black man shortage in 'the West', reasonably sane Afrikan men have leverage to positively influence the behaviour of Afrikan women. 

Why does it matter, It's just hair
The great ancestor Amos Wilson said that "Our Love is the greatest threat to our enemies". I would interpret this broadly to mean not only the love between an individual Afrikan man and woman but also our love of our Afrikaness and all it is composed of. I once attended a predominantly Black event where I and one other person were the only people dressed in Afrikan clothes (out of perhaps 400 people). A couple of Caucasian males gave me puzzled looks and then a backward older negro came up and addressed me as Chief. More importantly, he then confided that he really liked my outfit but would not have the confidence to wear Afrikan clothes in public. So this is where we have got to. We have young people who think it is ok to wear trainers and expose their underwear at funerals, but Afrikans are embarrassed to wear Afrikan clothes even amongst other Afrikans. We are F**k** up. There is a war being waged against us. It is a war for the essence of our soul. A war to make us forget and reject all that we were. A war to confine Afrikaness to the dustbin labelled savage, primitive, uncivilised, backward, unsophisticated, traditional. When they say Afrikan hair is 'unprofessional' this is what they mean. 'Don't bring your savage hair and culture into my space. Come correct as a proxy European.' Hair, like pigment and lips and nose and batty shape matters!

What Next
Firstly, I want to make it clear, that hair is just one part of the challenges we face. I have met many confused, hostile, stupid and ridiculous Afrikan women with natural hair. Similarly I know many caring, loving, intelligent, beautiful Afrikan women with chemically straightened hair or who wear weaves/wigs. As they say, "every puppy have im flea" and we are a pretty flea-bitten people at the moment. None of us is perfect, but equally this does not mean that because we all have failings we don't speak up and discuss our problems. We need to start being more honest with ourselves and each other. Talking about these sensitive issues without seeking to hurt, whilst recognising that someone's corn is bound to get mashed in the dialogue! So, a few things to take us on the road to hair recovery:

• Let's stop pretending that hair is not political and that what we do with it and to it; is simply a matter of personal preference
• Let's discuss this issue. Why not show the film at a community centre and have a discussion about the issues raised. You could use this newsletter to stimulate discussion
• Sisters. Please reduce the amount of money you spend on your hair and redirect some of it to some more productive purpose (see the next article) 
• Brothers, Praise sisters who have natural hair. Make them know that their courage is appreciated.
• Share this newsletter with your friends and family. Since it's about an issue we can all relate to it might even interest those who are 'not into all that Afrikan stuff'
• If you are a sister who insists that hair is simply a personal choice issue, go natural for even a couple of months and see the hostility and negativity you encounter. Then see what you think!
• Answer the question honestly. If your God is perfect how could s/he have made a mistake with your hair? Ask this question of other Afrikans who profess religiosity but reject their Creator's handiwork.
• Let's celebrate the uniqueness of Afrikan hair rather than being ashamed of it. Remember,  we are only humans without a Neanderthal bloodline!!        

      

2. The Impact of Recession on Afrikans in the US

In light of the cost of weaves the following article is enough to make you despair.

Economists: Economic Recession Hit Black Households Especially Hard

When the economy went down the tubes, times got particularly tough for black households, whose median net worth dove 83 percent from $13,450 in 2004 to $2,170 in 2009, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In comparison, the median net worth in white households dropped 24 percent, from $134,280 to $97,860, in that span.

An EPI official puts things bluntly to the AP: "In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents."

Compounding the problem is unemployment for black workers, which has risen from 14.7 percent to 16.2 percent since the end of the recession.

http://consumerist.com/2011/07/economists-recession-hit-black-households-especially-hard.html

So you see one 'good weave' costs about 50% of median black wealth in the US. However as I pointed out in a previous newsletter median wealth for single Black women in the US is less than $100! So a weave is ten times their median net wealth. 

3. ABDF Ltd
The revamped ABDF website will be going live in the next week or so. If you have previously contacted me about ABDF membership please get in touch so that I can update you.


That's it. I hope you found this newsletter stimulating. Not really dealing with big politics, but highly important issues in another way. Black Hair is linked to Black Power. By reclaiming our hair we reclaim our selves, in all our original beauty. We are the ones. Still beautiful in all our confusion, disunity and  madness. Just imagine what we will be like when we heal.


Tendai Mwari (Unto the Creator be Thankful)


Ifayomi

Remember, if you like what we do support what we do, because those that don't won't.

http://www.houseofknowledge.org.uk
http://www.healthpro.me (find out how to improve your heart and health)
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