No, My Kid Doesn’t Have “Good Hair”
And, there’s no need to pinch her nose
“Sit still!” It’s been thirty years and those words rock my insides, as if they were aimed at me. I was halfway across the room, watching my cousin’s otherwise light brown skin fill with red blotches along her scalp. With her lips askew and tears welling in her eyes, she cried silently, knowing that our grandmother would hear none of it.
“She hair BAD,” Grandmother muttered as she violently waved the comb through dark, thick, and unyielding strands. Strands that simply needed the right tools and the right kind of love. We know that now.
“She hair, BAD!” my grandmother continued.
I was born with a penis, which inherently made my life easier. My hair is also thicker in more places than not, but a short hairstyle and a brush were the expectation, while my cousin succumbed to hours on the floor between an elder's legs, having the hair pulled from her scalp in what was assumed to be an act of love. You see, she wasn’t born with a penis. Life was inherently more difficult.
The hard truth: my family is from the Caribbean, where liberation from the queen doesn’t mean liberation from white supremacy.
