African American Women, Hair, and Professionalism: Tyrielle Watkins


African Americans often face discrimination based on their hair textures and hairstyles. They use their hair to express themselves and their culture. Hair for colored people is considered their crown. You will often hear plenty of African Americans telling other African Americans to wear their crown proudly referring to being okay with wearing your natural hair with no regrets. In the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” Janie often got criticized by her community based on how she presented herself and how open she was to exploring. In the novel, Zora Nella Hurston said “Before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist. That was the only change people saw in her.” This was when Joe was upset about her showing her hair for other men to see. Women often are sexualized and/or degraded because of hair choice and still are to this day. An African American man or woman should never have to feel shame because of their hair as well as have to shave or change their hair because society does not think it is professional. Thanks to the Crown Act (Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair) people of color can no longer be discriminated against because of their hair textures or hairstyles including braids, locs, twists, wigs, etc. ADL article stated “A study showed that Black women were 1.5 times more likely to be sent home or know of a Black woman sent home from the workplace because of her hair.” to add many Black athletes have been told they could not compete because of their hair being to difference for society. Although many African Americans have lost job opportunities and been deemed non-eligible to compete in competitions we now have a law being moved to protect African Americans from any further hair discrimination. For African American women what society sees as professional does not have any space for black hair unless it is straight and simple but our hair is not just straight or simple. Our hair is our way of expressing what we see as natural, society saw as dirty or unkempt and now even though the law has not been passed for every state, African Americans have pushed to protect our Crowns.




 
  • Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. London: Virago, 1986. Print.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AAVE in Their Eyes Were Watching God

  Landon Lofton Ms. Harris ENGL 2017 April 27, 2022 AAVE in Their Eyes Were Watching God In Zora Hurston’s famous novel, Janie exhibits a type of speech that sets her apart from other mulatta characters in fiction, especially when compared to the characters in Passing. This vernacular, specifically African American Vernacular English, is incredibly important to the story by characterizing parts of Janie just by existing, and as a vessel whereby Hurston can glorify the African American Oral Tradition.  AAVE sits in a precarious spot between not being recognized as a valid language for study and one that has been found as “In contrast, researchers, educators (i.e., 1996, Ebonics Resolution), and parents (i.e., “The Ann Arbor Black English Case”) supporting a difference view argue that AAVE is a legitimate language with its own rules for pronunciation, grammar, syntax, and semantics.” (Harris, 194). The arguments over the language are difficult to distinguish between systema...
Read more

Racial Ambiguity Then and Now -John'Nise Peoples

 Racial Ambiguity Then and Now      Racial ambiguity, what is it? Racial ambiguity is defined as “not being easy to classify based on [your] physical appearance” (Grier 2014). In the text Passing, we see this affects our main characters in a positive way. Because of the period the novel is set in, it was beneficial to be racially ambiguous due to the racial tensions and laws at the time. We see our main characters, Irene and Clare, benefit from their racial ambiguity in separate ways. Clare allows herself to fully integrate into the white community as if she is one of their own whereas Irene chooses to live a black life at home but passes when it conveniences her. In this novel we see racial ambiguity being a savior for the women by allowing them to lead lives that were either fully or partially unaffected by their race.      In the novel Black No More, we see a theme similar to this although in the beginning of this novel whiteness is the goal. The ma...
Read more

When Will the Watcher Turn His Eyes Away?: A Discussion on Class and Systemic Racism in TEWWG

Bryonna LeBaron       Ms. Harris ENGL 2017-64187 22 April 2022 When Will the Watcher Turn His Eyes Away? Who are you to judge? When one girl’s desires backfires and she’s thrown into a loveless marriage because someone claims she doesn’t know what love is? When she leaves fame and faces her shame for finding- not love- but a sense of self that no one can give? When her Watchers callout against the White Flight just as she left Eatonville and tell her she classed off? When a trial is broken into Black and White and a fight to find the truth?             This is Janie’s truth. In Zora Neale Hurston’s  Their Eyes Were Watching God  judgment establishes a class system, contributing to a larger discussion today about implicit and explicit bias as a result of systemic racism. Hurston, although there is little direct confrontation about race, includes both Black and White groups who place the...
Read more