My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.
General news topics.
What is scarier than coming face-to-face with Freddie Krueger, the fictional character from the Nightmare on Elm Street horror film series? It is the thought that someone on EBay laid out nearly $1 million dollars for a Casey Anthony latex Halloween mask. Some believe that the 100 plus bidders may have been fake, but reportedly they all have legitimate EBay accounts. According to HLN and Tampa Bay Online the winning bid was actually $999,900. Not only is that really scary, it’s sad.
How much faith can one have in a court system that frees an Orlando, Florida woman, who by all evidence was partly or entirely responsible for the disappearance and subsequent murder of her own two year old child, then convicts a mother in the death of her 4 year old who was struck and killed as the mother jaywalked with her three children across a busy street while trying to get home?
Raquel Nelson, the 30 year old, Marietta, Georgia pedestrian was convicted of reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway and second-degree homicide by vehicle, while the driver of the van who killed Nelson’s son and injured the mother and another child, admitted that he had been drinking and using painkillers before getting behind the wheel got six months on a hit-and-run charge. What they hey???
After more than 125,000 people joined in an online petition campaign asking for mercy, Judge Kathryn Tanksley handed Nelson a year’s probation, ordered 40 hours of community service and offered her a new trial.
The suburban mother who appeared on NBC’s Today’s show twice this week said, “There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go through this again,” then added that she is weighing her options.
“I am not my hair . . . I am not your expectations.” No one has made that statement any clearer than talented singer-songwriter, India Arie, whose lyrics to her 2005 hit song, by the same title, are paraphrased in that quote. Arie’s words masterfully express the feelings of countless Black women who are fed up with being judged by how they wear their natural hair.
“When I cut my hair short, I did so because I was tired of putting straightening chemicals in my hair. I just wanted a nice, easy to manage, short natural haircut. I was fine with it, until someone told me that only lesbians wear short cuts.” Those were the words of one conscientious Black woman expressing her concern over hearsay. Shame on the people who believe that fallacy or the other tale that the natural hair cut worn by Black women is a show of militancy. When you try to apply everything across the board to everybody you get issues. And Black women have issues on this subject.
Issue number one – Black women are sick and tired of being stereotyped by the way they wear their hair. So let’s debunk the short-hair stereotypes. Do not prejudge or mischaracterize Black women who wear short hair, just because they refuse to conform and adopt the standards of a hair-obsessed society. While some women who wear the so-called butch cut are lesbians all are not.
Issue number two — There are countless Black women who have naturally long and relatively straight hair, while others do not. Some of those who are lacking the flowing tresses will go to extremes to look like what they consider to be acceptable, the American norm. And countless numbers of them will opt for the time consuming, costly process of getting weaves and braids. Unfortunately, many will do so at the expense of losing their natural hair to alopecia.