Q & A | 07/08/2009 12:00 am
A Conversation With Keneisha Sinclair: A White Woman Learns About Black Hairstyling
wOw’s Executive Intern Ann Hodgman addresses with her friend the realities of race and hair.
Editor’s note: Ann Hodgman is part of the wowOwow Executive Intern Program, where experienced editors learn a new skill from our younger, Internet-savvy staff.
Over the years, I’ve watched my friend Keneisha Sinclair’s hair go through endless transformations. One month, it would be relaxed. A couple of months later, it would be braided, with extensions. A couple of months after that, it would be a cloud of ringlets. Since my own white-person’s short hair has basically had the same blah, Mommy-ish layering for 30 years, I love watching Keneisha’s hair morph into a completely new look every time I see her.
Keneisha’s younger than most wowOwow.com readers — she just graduated from Yale — but she’s not too young to have plenty of strongly voiced opinions about female self-image, both black and white, in our culture. (In fact, her college thesis was about female body image.) So I figured she would be the perfect person to ask about black hair.
And I had a lot of questions. Transcribed, our conversation ran to 48 pages! Here are some of the (ahem) highlights.
| It sounds as though black girls' hair issues are like white girls' weight issues. |
ANN HODGMAN: When I was a little girl at sleepaway camp, the main concern of the black girls at camp was whether their hair was straight — not how it was styled. Do you feel as though "straightness" was the guiding aesthetic for black hair for a long time?
KENEISHA SINCLAIR: Yes, I think so. Especially for little girls, there’s this idea that their hair should be straight and long. But that’s just not the way black hair usually is.
ANN: When did you first start thinking about your hair?
KENEISHA: I didn’t really think about it for a long time because my mom always did my hair for me, and she was really good at it. So I don’t think I thought about it until I wanted to get it relaxed — maybe third grade.
ANN: You had your hair relaxed in third grade?
KENEISHA: Fourth grade. The rule was, I was supposed to wait until I was 13 — but I couldn’t wait anymore. Finally my mom said OK.
ANN: Why couldn’t you wait? Because white girls had straight hair?
KENEISHA: No — I wasn’t even thinking about it in those ways yet. Having your hair relaxed was what grownup black girls did, and when you’re ten you want to be very, very grown up. (That was the year that I put all my Barbies under my bed.) I wasn’t thinking about it like, "Oh, this is a beauty ideal because of white culture." Not until I was a little bit older did I start thinking about it in that way.
ANN: What’s involved in getting hair relaxed? "My people" don’t know anything about this.
KENEISHA: It’s a really, really frightening process, which is why my mom wanted me to wait. But parents even do this to kindergartners, which is awful.
ANN: Oh, my God. Do they still use lye, like in The Autobiography of Malcolm X?
KENEISHA: No, a relaxer is a little bit more humane at this point, but it’s still really frightening. You get this white creamy stuff, which is the relaxer, put on your head. It’s chemicals — some kind of terrible, low-PH chemicals. You sit there for as long as you can handle it, and then it gets washed out.
ANN: You mean you sit until you reach a certain level of pain?
Read more about: Ann Hodgman, Beauty, Black Women, Friendship, hair, Hairstyles, Keneisha Sinclair, Q & A, Racism, Style
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154 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
Every race has sterotypes. The ones about them from outside their race and the ones about them anong themselves. I am an older woman who thinks that a child shouldn’t have to be in agony just to look "normal" or desired; no matter the race. This is not just sexism or racist. It is sexualation of children due to media influence.
What the woman said about her sons saddens me as much as reading about the daughters. Let children be sdimply children.
I’m glad this got a good dialogue going because it was so fun to do!
Linda, my suggestion for your daughter would be braids like the kind shown on this site (randomly pulled from google) :http://www.amandahairbraiding.com/amanda/specialty.php?mghash=b80da847d353ab7cc3c89c01a9e6ad91&mggal=17
P.S. I know that relaxers do NOT have lye in them today and did not mean to make it seem like they do; we were referencing the "conks" from back in the day.
Keneisha Sinclair
Please read the posts of Belinda Joy. They’re insightful and informative. She has contributed greatly to this discussion.
May I make a suggestion to the parents/family members who have commented on the difficulty of combing their biracial kids hair. As I stated in a previous post on this thread, dependent upon how much of the genes the child received from the Black parent will determine how coarse the child’s hair is. And if it is kinky to the point that you can’t run a comb through it without pulling and tugging, it means the hair is not hydrated. Always remember, White’s have lots of oil in the hair, Blacks have very little oil.
So a couple of suggestions for products you can find at any Walgreens or Walmart for that matter. Soft & Beautiful’s "Just for me" line of hair care for kids. They are rich in conditioners, oils and emoluments, things needed to keep Black hair healthy and manageable. They offer detangling spritzes that won’t damage the hair and really work. There is also a product called Africa’s Best - Children’s hair care that is all organic and has shea butter. Their hair will be really manageable after using these products.
But which ever you choose understand you HAVE to apply some type of oil or emollient to the hair (small amount, not to the point that they are greasy) and brush the hair regularly. This stimulates the natural oil glands in the head and over a short time you will see a vast difference in how manageable the hair is.The biggest mistake I have seen personally in White women raising biracial kids is the inability to understand the difference between Black and White hair and the assumption they make that just because their child is half White their hair is the same as theirs only curlier. Nope that’s not the case ladies.
And one last thing to the women on this thread with biracial children who have commented on how difficult it is to comb their hair, I can only pray that you are not complaining about their hair as you pull and tug in the attempt to comb their hair. This is how esteem problems begin and they get the message that their is something "wrong" and "different" about them. When in actuality their wavy hair is to be celebrated. Now that you have the information on what to use on their hair to keep it healthy and beautiful, the next time you have to comb their hair rave about your love of their curls and teach them that their hair may be different, but it is still beautiful. As our the ancestors of which part of who they are, derived from.
Belinda Joy
Thank you, for another excellent post! I am especially appreciative of your response to the grandmother and mothers of biracial children. I too hope they’re not sending negative messages to these children. Messages which injure, affect ones self esteem and the way they view themself in the world.
You corrected all the misinformation and distortion of the process of relaxing black hair provided in the interview. The interview was terribly disappointing. It was a Big Bust! It failed to educate those who are not knowlegeable about relaxing black hair.
Your post provided all that was missing in the interview. You information was precise and factual.
The interview seemed to deal with the horrors and crosses black women have to bear inorder to have glorious straight hair. I cringed several times at the visions created by Keneishas words. Personally, I’m going to encourage posters to read your posts and take notes. You’ve answered all of the questions asked by posters.
Belinda, thanks for the hair product suggestions. I have in fact used the Just For Me brand, but it seemed no more effective than anything else. The detangler didn’t do much to detangle my daughter’s hair, which was very disappointing for both of us. I will now try the Africa’s Best line with fingers crossed. Fortunately, I live near a beauty supply store that has an enormous assortment of manufacturers and brands —- my problem is that I don’t know which to choose! (The owners are not African-American and have not seemed very knowledgable.) I’ve been asking my black co-workers for guidance, and they’ve been helpful, but as you might imagine, everyone has a different opinion.
And one side note —- I *NEVER* say or even imply to my child that her hair or skin is anything other than beautiful. What I do say is that my hair is different, and isn’t she lucky not to have to wash hers every day like i do? I’m mostly apologizing that I haven’t yet found an easier way to help her manage it.
I had a black friend in elementary school who went through the whole hair nightmare all the way into high school she straightened, she braided, she went to salons and she hated every minute of it. This is not a person who was meant to sit still. She’s always in motion and always has been. Sitting in a chair for more than half an hour or so was a nightmare for her.
In the meantime, I had my own hair issues. By high school, I gave up the idea of long hair forever. My hair is straight and thick, but each strand is baby-fine. It does only what it wants to do and I couldn’t even keep a ponytail thing going.
We both chopped off our hair. I got a cute layered cut, over the ears. It was a true pixie, and for the first time in my life, all I needed to do was comb it after I washed it and it looked great.
She went very short and natural. No messing around in the morning, no fighting with hair when she wanted to be outside - just a short, almost boyish cut that looked terrific on her. For the first time in her life, it hit her that those cheekbones were meant to be seen (Yes, I indulged in the "I told you so".) and I don’t think she’s ever bothered growing it out again.
I’ve completely given up fighting with my hair, although I freely admit to coloring it. It’s made me a happier person. I highly recommend it.
It is popular to desire to be different than you are made. It is just as popular when women all conformed to the same ideal that men get bored and want the one that is different. The story details the job of dealing with black hair, but I like the title of the article for that reason. I recall the 80s big hair era and the cost of perms skyrocketed. Perms smell terrible and they burn your hair into curls leaving a stinky mess for a day or two.
This remind me of a boy who is mixed race and grew up in a metropolitan area. He had beautiful curly dark hair and I had a perm. I learned one day babysitting him At the age of 4, that he, wished "The King" would make him white like his Mama with straight hair. He had not been churched as evidenced by his own name for our Creator, not at that time. It was such a heartbreaking moment for me to realize that he had already figured out something was up with race. Now, it could have been family dynamics duriing a divorce that caused this wish to form in this little child’s mind, but judging from the stares in the grocery stores I would get when we would go out it probably has something to do with society.
I explained how much I paid to have my hair permed like his and it seemed to help. He, with his family’s love, grew up to be a well adjusted young man. I will never forget that day he shared his thoughts with me though and it makes me want to cry just typing about it. I wonder if even today there is another child out there thinking the same way. If so, we got work to do.