Blog Action Day '14 -INEQUALITY (in the healthy hair community)

16^th October is Blog Action Day!!!!!! It is a day when all bloggers have one conversation. In the sense that, we all make posts on one topic/theme. It is my first time participating. I registered my blog and I am ready to just express myself! This years’ #BAD14 theme is INEQUALITY.

Now since this is healthy hair lifestyle blog, I decided to make a post about INEQUALITY within the healthy hair community.

My phone dictionary app (don’t we just love technology?) as “1. The condition of being unequal. 2. Social disparity; injustice 3. Partiality.

I also think it can be defined as a way in which socially defined categories of persons are differently positioned or treated as a result of the category in which they fall. In the healthy hair community the different categories are “natural, relaxed, colour treated and white (yes! White! )

Different people on healthy hair journeys have at some point in their life found them unfairly treated because of their hair choices.

Now, as a relaxed black lady, I have found myself in many instances in situations or groups where I felt that I was being undermined because,

I do not keep my hair in its natural state

I have short hair.

I have personally committed myself to researching and exploring healthy black hair practices. Finding myself being unfairly treated or getting a different response as a person with unadulterated natural hair or a person with long relaxed hair surely does make me feel some type of way.

However, this is not to say that only persons with short relaxed hair are unfairly treated or discriminated against. Some long haired relaxed ladies have been vehemently rejected in some circles. I have heard stories and seen it happen first hand but, it is not in my place to go into specifics.

The natural hair community is not left out of this. In fact, I personally (I repeat, “PERSONALLY”) feel they are the most discriminated against. I will attribute this to the fact that the natural hair community is a relatively new one. Some natural hair ladies have received bad judgment because their hair isn’t “tamed.” I have heard stories first hand from natural hair ladies who lost job opportunities because they wore their natural hair out for job interviews. Others have also been warned in their workplaces because their hair wasn’t deemed “professional” enough.

Now about the white…..hm white. Some communities felt that they reserved the right to the word “natural.” They felt it was going beyond a certain limit if curly haired white girls or white people in the general used the word. I do not want to get into that.

That is that. It would be hypocritical to deny that these inequalities exist in the black healthy hair community.

We should all just learn to respect each other’s hair choice and support. It’s my hair it’s your hair but, we are one people. SUPPORT! TREAT EACH OTHER AS EQUALS!

Leave your 2cents in the comments. Share your experience. And I love a good argument. *wink