One day, my habitually late professor was later than usual arriving to class. My classmates and I spent the time catching up with one another. One student, we’ll call him “Joe,” walked in and settled down in a seat a few desks away from mine. After a moment Joe turned to me and asks "Z, is that the real deal?" waving his hands around his head. "I like it."
It took me a moment to realize that he was referring to my hair, and after my initial shock dissipated, I hesitantly answered "Yes… it is.”
I could tell that he did not, could not understand the gravity of what he’d just asked me. At what point did it become socially acceptable to ask someone whether or not some part of them is natural? I would never have dared to ask if a woman has made some sort of augmentation to her body or if a man is wearing a toupee, especially in a public setting.
Joe, a white male, blundered into what many would consider a social faux pas. There was no way that I could effectively show him how his clumsy question had exposed the liberties that people of privilege take when making assumptions at the expense of others. After a rather palpable awkward silence, I asked, “What if it wasn’t my hair? Would you really expect me to answer that?”
For so many women, hair is powerful. It carries weight, meaning, and definition. It can be the source of one’s self-esteem, or the root of self-loathing. It is linked to some western women’s level of confidence in both social and professional settings. It is a statement, an expression, an opportunity to communicate to those around you without saying a word. Whether it is closely cropped or long and flowing, midnight black or platinum blond, straight as rain falling or coiled as the graceful curls of smoke from a lit candle; hair is identity for so many women. With it, one can do everything from flirt to seduce, punctuate to intimidate, acquiesce to outright defy. And it is the cornerstone of the multi-billion dollar beauty industry, an industry that women of color spend the most in and yet profit from the least.
I recently watched Chris Rock’s documentary “Good Hair” where he explores the lengths to which some women in the African American community are willing to go to style their hair, from chemical relaxers to the different types of weaves. While informative and hilariously entertaining, it left me wishing for deeper examination of the psychosocial implications of hair in communities of color. It did touch on them, but superficially at best, and at times ran dangerously close to sacrificing cultural respect in exchange for a few laughs. While it provided a look into the dynamic of hair in black communities, it did so without real context (in my opinion), and made trivial what women of color spend fortunes trying to understand and gain control of. The concept of “good hair” and “bad hair” in African communities is itself, a testament to the years of degradation that our great-grandmothers underwent, and the multi-generational aftereffects that women of color today continue to suffer from. In essence, we are born with “bad hair.” And through processes of heating, dying, neutralizing, relaxing, chemically burning, beating hair into obedience, we achieve at last what is believed to be “good hair.” Good, bad, good, bad… just about hair.
So there we were, his rapidly growing embarrassment matched only by my equally growing delight in seeing him backpedal. He mumbling something about "Beyonce’s song...pat your weave..." then he started saying how fake hair is the same as his color contact lenses, as though that should be some consolation. I did not allow him any reprieve by responding, just let him dangle over the abyss of social awkwardness he’d dug for himself.
Though his ignorance irritated me, what stung the most was the fact that it highlighted the significant pressures placed on African women to fit in with society’s standards of beauty; one that does not include us, our hair, our skin, our lineage. When it’s all said and done, a woman’s hair is her own. Whether it’s hers because she grew it or because she bought it is inconsequential. And if she decided on curls tomorrow, flat-ironed the next day, a G.I. Jane cut, or a full weave she should celebrate it as an art, a form of self expression, and not the definition of who she is.
Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, "How does it feel to betray your own race?" Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 9-foot-tall, long-tailed alien.
Strange as it may seem for a film that pits greedy, immoral humans against noble denizens of a faraway moon, "Avatar" is being criticized by a small but vocal group of people who allege it contains racist themes — the white hero once again saving the primitive natives.
Since the film opened to widespread critical acclaim three weeks ago, hundreds of blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have said things such as the film is "a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people" and that it reinforces "the white Messiah fable."
The film's writer and director, James Cameron, says the real theme is about respecting others' differences.
In the film (read no further if you don't want the plot spoiled for you) a white, paralyzed Marine, Jake Sully, is mentally linked to an alien's body and set loose on the planet Pandora. His mission: persuade the mystic, nature-loving Na'vi to make way for humans to mine their land for unobtanium, worth $20 million per kilo back home.
Like Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves" and Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai" or as far back as Jimmy Stewart in the 1950 Western "Broken Arrow," Sully soon switches sides. He falls in love with the Na'vi princess and leads the bird-riding, bow-and-arrow-shooting aliens to victory over the white men's spaceships and mega-robots.
Adding to the racial dynamic is that the main Na'vi characters are played by actors of color, led by a Dominican, Zoe Saldana, as the princess. The film also is an obvious metaphor for how European settlers in America wiped out the Indians.
Robinne Lee, an actress in such recent films as "Seven Pounds" and "Hotel for Dogs," said that "Avatar" was "beautiful" and that she understood the economic logic of casting a white lead if most of the audience is white.
But she said the film, which so far has the second-highest worldwide box-office gross ever, still reminded her of Hollywood's "Pocahontas" story — "the Indian woman leads the white man into the wilderness, and he learns the way of the people and becomes the savior."
"It's really upsetting in many ways," said Lee, who is black with Jamaican and Chinese ancestry. "It would be nice if we could save ourselves."
Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of the sci-fi Web site io9.com, likened "Avatar" to the recent film "District 9," in which a white man accidentally becomes an alien and then helps save them, and 1984's "Dune," in which a white man becomes an alien Messiah.
"Main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color ... (then) go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed," she wrote.
"When will whites stop making these movies and start thinking about race in a new way?" wrote Newitz, who is white.
Black film professor and author Donald Bogle said he can understand why people would be troubled by "Avatar," although he praised it as a "stunning" work.
"A segment of the audience is carrying in the back of its head some sense of movie history," said Bogle, author of "Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films."
Bogle stopped short, however, of calling the movie racist.
"It's a film with still a certain kind of distortion," he said. "It's a movie that hasn't yet freed itself of old Hollywood traditions, old formulas."
Writer/director Cameron, who is white, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that his film "asks us to open our eyes and truly see others, respecting them even though they are different, in the hope that we may find a way to prevent conflict and live more harmoniously on this world. I hardly think that is a racist message."
There are many ways to interpret the art that is "Avatar."
What does it mean that in the final, sequel-begging scene, Sully abandons his human body and transforms into one of the Na'vi for good? Is Saldana's Na'vi character the real heroine because she, not Sully, kills the arch-villain? Does it matter that many conservatives are riled by what they call liberal environmental and anti-military messages?
Is Cameron actually exposing the historical evils of white colonizers? Does the existence of an alien species expose the reality that all humans are actually one race?
"Can't people just enjoy movies any more?" a person named Michelle posted on the Web site for Essence, the magazine for black women, which had 371 comments on a story debating the issue.
Although the "Avatar" debate springs from Hollywood's historical difficulties with race, Will Smith recently saved the planet in "I Am Legend," and Denzel Washington appears ready to do the same in the forthcoming "Book of Eli."
Bogle, the film historian, said that he was glad Cameron made the film and that it made people think about race.
"Maybe there is something he does want to say and put across" about race, Bogle said. "Maybe if he had a black hero in there, that point would have been even stronger."
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Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press.