Black Girls Shouldn't Have to Prostest to Wear Their Natural Hair - Emma Reyna

Summary:

On September 1st an article written by Thabile Vilakazi, for CNN, states how a 13 year old student at Pretoria High School for Girls in South Africa named Zulaikha Patel started a protest against the racist and discriminating hair policy's at her school. These policy's stressed boldly if African American girls wore their hair in their natural state it was considered to be not tidy and exotic and that it needed to be tamed. In other words, their natural hair, and by extension their natural self was not considered acceptable for the school dress code. And because this was unacceptable they were told that they needed to straighten their hair to fit the ideal hair of  European women and by doing this they were actually degrading them from their African identify and culture. This sparked a great movement in other schools in the same country who had similar policies. Thankfully this ban was overturned and it really opened the realization of these policies are antiquated and need revamping.


Analysis: When I first heard about the article without having any prior knowledge to it I was astonished by the fact that we still lived in a century that had these types of issues especially towards the way women style their hair. The reason why this whole situation is important because it addresses the racial and discriminating problems towards beauty standards and just in general in our everyday lives. I believe every girl has every right to decided how she wears her hair without being persecuted by the beliefs of others of what their ideal standards of beauty are, its her choice ultimately. An African girl in her own country should be able to wear her natural hair in her natural state and should not by any means told otherwise.


Synthesis:

This event in particular reminded me of when in the late eighteen century in Louisiana women of African descant were banned from wearing their natural hair in public.This led to the "Tigon laws" being passed which meant these women had to cover their hair with a fabric cloth..or a headdress. The reason why this law passed was because women of African descent were  attracting attention from white men by putting many jewels and treasures into her hair. White women were jealous of the attention that these women were getting. This became a threat to white women and their social order and therefore the laws were created and place into effect.


Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/31/africa/south-africa-school-racism/index.html