on Kinky Curls

So my hair’s natural. When I say natural, I don’t mean the no-relaxer-but-I-rock-a-Dominican-wash-and-press natural. I’ve decided that the best name for my hair is kinky curl natural. My hair prefers to settle in a wooly nap with a barely perceptible tendril curl at the tip­­– hence the name kinky curl.

But the kinky curl that I’ve grown so fond of is the result of years of hard work. I’ve sworn off the press and curl, and yes, they were still calling it that when I used to frequent the hair shop. I managed to survive the vein-popping, awkward length stage when any handy scissors would almost certainly be used to complete the finishing touches to my hairdo. Newly purchased products too often made it to the trashcan, because they were too greasy, dried my hair out, or dribbled down my forehead, giving me acne or stinging my eyes. And there’s no forgetting the days of experimenting, when I would leave the house rocking a new hairstyle and take note of people’s responses, asking myself, “Are the Black people looking at me like I’m crazy?” Followed by, “Are the White people looking at me like I’m crazy?” Those days are far in between now, but every once in a while you’ll catch me boldly stepping out with a new style­– one that I’m just not quite sure about yet. I’ve grown alongside my hair, and now there’s a third question, “Do I really give a damn what other people think?” So even when (not if) I look jacked up, I strut still, crowned by an incorrigible do that deserves nothing less than to be worn with the utmost confidence.

Yes, my hair’s natural, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require work. I think that’s one of the biggest misperceptions of the natural-headed. We do our hair just like you do yours. Even locs, which I place under the category of a ‘natural style,’ require the effort of twisting every loc on your head at intervals determined by the amount of new growth nap you are comfortable with. The more comfortable you are with God’s nap, the less you’ll find yourself twisting that new growth.

When I tire from the daily effort that is required from my basic natural, I typically gear myself up for the 4 - 7 hour transition to a natural style. My style of choice is the two-stranded twist. And though I find myself complimented often and asked that utterly affirming phrase for the Black woman, “Girl, who did your hair?” – I have to let my dirty little secret out. I only twist because I don’t know how to braid extensions into my hair, cornrow, or flat twist. . . I don’t have enough upper arm strength to blow out my hair. . . And oh yeah, I’m cheap, so it has to be the most special of occasions for me to pay someone else to do my hair. But like I said it’s my dirty little secret, so most often I smile and toss back, “Oh girl, thank you. I did.”

Even after the twists are in, I still have to make the effort to keep them neat. In my personal preference, I’m all nap and fuzz when I’m rocking my fro, but when the twists are in I like them tight. I figure, what’s the point of 7 hours of twisting if I’m still going to have to do double-takes in the mirror just to check my edges? So I retwist weekly and each morning I strategically remove my shower cap with approximately 2 minutes left to my shower. It is this dreaded object that sometimes triggers full-fledged flashbacks to the relaxed days of my youth when I used to do and sacrifice anything just to keep my hair from getting wet, like using the textbook during a freak rainstorm even though I knew my homework for that morning was nestled inside, sigh. After removing my shower cap, my natural style finally requires the ease of effort that many Black woman, some secretly and others more vocally, want: Wet lightly and shake it out like a White girl.

And though I have arrived at this point, I never forget, nor do I devalue what it has taken to get here. There has been foolishness sitting atop my head, even teary-eyed anger when my hair refused to do what I wanted it to do or what I saw it doing on other folks’ heads. There was also damage states when I forced it do it anyway. But more importantly was the tremendous amount of growth I experienced as I learned to listen to my body, my hair simply an extension of it, or the boost in self-confidence as I finally accepted my God-given hair type. This point that I’ve arrived at is not one where I celebrate the fact that in the mornings, I get to wet lightly and shake it out like a White girl, but it’s one in which I celebrate a journey that has ended in the knowledge that my Black hair is to be revered in all its complexity and beauty.

on Loving Country Music

I’m a cowry-shell-rocking afroed Black girl who’s in love. I’m in love with country music. I don’t mean just the ever-so-familiar faces like the power-couple Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Everybody knows them. I mean the artists who you’ll only hear on country music channels like Little Big Town or Julie Roberts. I don’t just stick with modern country. I love the classics, too. Loretta Lynn, George Jones, the famous rock-a-billy artist Brenda Lee, or Patsy Cline whose career, just like Donny Hathaway’s, ended entirely too early by a tragic death. I don’t just enjoy the country of Kenny Chesney or Keith Urban. That’s that mild stuff, I tell people. You’ll find me coasting down the highway, radio cranked up to a slap-your-thigh bluegrass song by Alison Krauss. My friends, they’re Hip Hop Heads, neo-soul lovers, and jazz aficionados, but you may rightfully call me a Twang Head.

A Yankee by upbringing, I wasn’t always in love with country music, but I couldn’t help myself when I stuck around Nashville after finishing college. The city is home to some of the most well-known landmarks on the country music scene. The area known as Music Row is a couple of streets densely packed with major country music record labels. There’s the Bluebird Café, whose Writer’s Nights have been frequented by such folks as the songwriter of Kenny Roger’s hit, “The Gambler,” or the unsigned and aspiring Garth Brooks in the 80’s. Then there’s the Ryman Auditorium, the early home of the “Grand Ole Opry.” This weekend when I drove back to my old city to see a friend off to Canada, the memory of my first visit to the Opry came flooding back. It was there that I fell the hardest.

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Attending the Opry seemed only fitting as a country music fan. The show has been going strong since 1925 when it was first broadcast live as a radio show. Today the lineup is a motley crew of historical country music fixtures like Dolly Parton and the newer, like Canadian-born Terri Clark. The Opry tapes in different locations throughout the year, but what the true Twang Head wants is to attend the show in its original location at the Ryman Auditorium, where it aired live from 1943 until 1974, before moving to a larger, more modern venue.

I couldn’t find anyone to go with me, so a fledgling Twang Head and solo, I headed to Opry at the Ryman. I decided to attend on a night when Charley Pride was performing. Back when Black country musicians were nonexistent, Mr. Charley Pride charted 29 number-one country hits between 1966 and 1989. He still hangs onto the title as the most successful Black country singer ever. There’s got to be a few other faces like mine in the crowd, I figured.

The Ryman sits about midway down the hill that marks your entry into downtown Nashville. From the top of the hill at night, you can see a rainbow of neon lights, the country clubs, cowboy boot stores, and bars lining Broadway Street, until they fall off into the dark, disappearing into where the Cumberland River meets the bottom of the hill at 1st Avenue.

I’m parking with only a few minutes left until the show is supposed to start. I’m hustling down the street, mad that I didn’t set my clock back from CP– colored people– time, so I could arrive promptly for my official induction to the country music world. At the Ryman, I pass one of those notoriously expensive busses, the extravagance of the pimped out interiors superseding the mediocrity of cross-country transportation by bus. I smile when I see that it’s one of the busses of Montgomery Gentry. Their song “Some People Change,” with a verse about a neo-Nazi, down on his names, praying, rising up a changed man, breaks out at the refrain with a surprise traditional gospel choir vocal. This is one of my favorite songs, combining my love of country music with the socially relevant message. It’s a song that I can hold on to, one that recognizably coincides with my exterior.

I pick up my ticket from will call. I had decided that to do the Opry, would be to do it in style. So I bought the best that I could afford. At the Opry, a little goes a long way, and for around 50 dollars I would be sitting at the foot of the stage.

Before going in, I have to make one phone call.

“Hey Dad,” I say, knowing exactly where he would be, sitting in the rocking chair in his childhood home across from his 89-year-old father, who would be absorbing random strings of the seven o’clock news, as his old age dozed him in and out.

“Guess where I’m at?”

I take a deep breath, beginning to feel the nervous energy swell inside.

“I’m at the Grand Old Opry, about to go in and see Charley Pride.”

I pause as my news is broadcasted throughout the room on the other end of the line.

“Guess where Marona is?” my dad echoes to my grandfather and my grandmother, she no doubt sitting only feet from Papa C.L. at the kitchen table, as she has done for over 60 years.

There’s no missing the muffled excitement of the room transmitted back to me, voices singing haphazardly out of tune in the background.

“I gotta go. It’s about to start,” I say, hurrying off the phone.

I step in the auditorium. I may be late, but I haven’t missed a performance, only the historic welcoming to the Grand Ole Opry. The auditorium is dark, but I’m up so close, the stage lights are blinding me. I’m sharing the spotlight with the likes of Little Jimmy Dickens, imagining my fro casting a silhouette across the stage, wondering if the Opry-attendees behind me are irritated by their obstructed view.

The show starts at 7:00 but Charley Pride won’t be playing until 9:00. I sit through Ricky Skaggs, Jimmy C. Newman, Earl Scruggs, counting down the hour until Mr. Pride graces the stage, reminding myself that this is not a jazz concert so I shouldn’t be snapping, nor is it R&B, so my hand doesn’t need to be waving rhythmically in the air, obstructing even more views.

Charley Pride comes on. “No doubt about it. It's for sure I'm coming down with love,” he sings. There’s something about sitting in the dark gazing up at a fluorescing stage that makes you feel like the person working it sees no one but you. “Don't cha, don't cha, don't cha fight the feelings of love,” Every time he stands in front of me, I take it as an official welcoming of my love of country music, each sonorous note sung validating me. My grandfather, my father, and now Mr. Charley Pride scoot over to make room for a new fan.

The lights come up. I stand up, stretch, and turn around. From where I stand, I see no other faces in the crowd that look like mine. I smile. It’s okay.

This proud cowry-shell-rocking afroed Black girl has declared her love for country music.

My friends, they were at the club and open mic night, but on this Saturday evening, I headed to the Grand Ole Opry, a name coined during the 20s by harmonica wizard Deford Bailey– the first Black country star.

I’m in love with country music.

on Black Graduation Ceremonies

Over 100 Black students marched into an auditorium this weekend swaying in time to the beat of drums, the mundanity of “Pomp and Circumstance” absent, replaced by the powerful and moving sounds of African drumming. It was an occasion of vibrancy and creativity, each graduate adding his or her own touch with the spirited swaying of his or her shoulders as they filed into the crowded room. It was a celebration of Bachelors, Masters, Doctors of Philosophy, and Medical Degrees. It was Stanford University’s Black Graduation Ceremony.

As I sat through my little brother’s BGC and scanned the crowd of smiling family, friends, and mentors, I was overwhelmed with pride. Sharing the joy in my heart that my baby brother’s graduation held, was the feeling of knowing I was standing in a room in which I felt deeply linked to each and every other person around me.

BGCs are held throughout the country to honor the achievements of black students, including at my alma mater, Vanderbilt University, and my sister’s, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Indiana University where she obtained her JD. Given the statistics that still paint a dismal picture of low graduation rates among Black students, the achievements are indeed significant, and should be celebrated.

Some criticize the tradition of BGCs as separatist. But as the Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Stanford University’s Black Community Services Center said as she opened up the ceremony, BGCs are about “congregation, not separation.” The members of the audience, who were not all White nor all American born, congregated to celebrate the success of Black students. It was a subset of the celebratory weekend, with most students, if not all, also attending university-wide commencements and departmental ceremonies.

BGCs symbolize different things for different individuals. For me it was about seeing what is so integral to my identity reflected back. As a student attending a predominately white institution, I often felt like I was on the sidelines. On the evening of my BGC, I stood on the stage front and center in honor of both my achievements and my culture. At that moment, I knew every part of me was being affirmed.

For some, it’s about tradition and celebrating the collective experience, from the donning of the Kente Stole to the singing of the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, a standard for most BGCs.

And still for others it’s about celebrating the feat of managing to achieve at a predominantly white institutions, triumphant in the face of adversity.

In the midst of celebration, there’s insulation from the negativity of those who are critical of the place these ceremonies have in 2009. If you have participated by gracing the stage or simply sitting in the audience, you’ll realize that the experience is indescribable. And when done right, these events, as my baby brother put it, are nothing short of spectacular.

on Minority Opinions

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Sonia Sotomayor have distinctively different views rooted in their experiences growing up as minorities in America. Sotomayor tends to favor affirmative action programs and racially-conscious law, while Thomas consistently fights against it. If Sotomayor is confirmed, it is likely that the two justices would be at extreme opposites for many decisions ­– and this is the way it should be.

As a someone who supports racially-conscious programs that deliberately seek to reverse disparities (call it affirmative action if you want), I still recognize the importance of having a diverse set of perspectives within the minority vote, which Justice Thomas provides. Not all African-Americans believe in affirmative action, but it is important to note that most do.

A 2003 poll done by the Pew Research Center found that 86% of “nonwhites” favored affirmative action. In a more recent Quinnipiac poll earlier this June, 78% of Black respondents said they “think affirmative action programs that give preferences to blacks and other minorities in hiring, promotions and college admissions should be continued.”

Although Justice Thomas’ views may be held by some, it is not representative of the majority opinion. Sotomayor will provide a perspective that is more aligned with polling results for the minority population. Our highest court should be representative of the American population and not just skewed to interpret the Constitution as the sitting president pleases.

The minority voice is only going to be strengthened with the addition of Sotomayor’s to the already vocal Thomas’, each making decisions involving race and ethnicity from a place of first-hand experience as no other justice can.