{"id":159,"date":"2015-12-19T00:12:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T05:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/?page_id=159"},"modified":"2015-12-19T08:59:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T13:59:23","slug":"hair","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/hair\/","title":{"rendered":"Hair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000\">The laws of science say that you can take something and make <del>nothing<\/del> out of it, but you cannot take <del>nothing<\/del> and make something out of it. In the case of Black people&#8217;s hair, you have live, woolly, curly, human hair where harsh chemicals and heat are applied to kill the hair until it lays in <del>ruin<\/del> like the white people&#8217;s hair or dogs&#8217; hair. You took something and made nothing out of it. But there is no known chemical or application of heat that can change the <del>dead<\/del>, straight hair of white people to the live, lovely curly hair of Black people. <del>You cannot take nothing and make something out of it.<\/del><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000\">-Carlos Cooks<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Elizabeth Acevedo - &quot;Hair&quot;\" width=\"940\" height=\"529\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0svS78Nw_yY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><del><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Broken<\/del><\/strong>\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000\"><strong>Ends <del>Broken<\/del> Promises &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\"><strong>Mariposa (Maria Teresa Fernandez)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Pinches y ribbons\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">to hold back and tie<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">oppressing baby naps<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">never to be free.<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Clips and ribbons<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">to hold back and tie<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">imprisoning baby naps<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">never to have the dignity to be.<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Chemical relaxers<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">broken ends \/ broken promises<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">activator and cream<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">mixed in with bitterness<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">mix well&#8230;<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Keep away from children<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Avoid contact with eyes<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">This product contains lye and lies<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Harmful if swallowed<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">The ritual of combing \/ parting \/ sectioning<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">the greasing of the scalp \/ the neck<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">the forehead \/ the ears<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">the process \/ and then the burning \/ the burning<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;It hurts to be <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">beautiful<\/span>, &#8216;ta te quieta.&#8221;<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">My mother tells me.<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;\u00a1Pero mami me pica!&#8221;<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">and then the running \/ the running to water<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">to salvation \/ to neutralizer \/ to broken ends<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">and broken promises.<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Graduating from Carefree Curl<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">to Kitty curl \/ to Revlon \/ to super duper Fabulaxer<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">different boxes offering us broken ends and broken promises.<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve come a long way since Dixie Peach,&#8221;<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">my mother tells me as I sit at the kitchen table.<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">Chemical relaxers to melt away the shame<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">until new growth reminds us<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">that it is time once again<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">for the ritual and the fear of<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">scalp burns and hair loss<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">and the welcoming of broken ends<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">and broken<\/span><\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #000000\">promises.<\/span><\/h6>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>&#8221; There\u2019s the ever present hair thing. That was annoying. My mom did our hair. You know she did the desrizados, the relaxers, every 6 weeks. like clockwork. It\u2019s like having all of these black features, African features, and like my mom low key being like this is wrong&#8230;we\u2019re going to do what we can to fix it, which you know also happens in Black American families, but sometimes the mother also looks that way.&#8221; -HER<\/strong><\/h3>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>I remember being no older than five or six years old, and I was just entirely fed up with my poofy hair that always ended up in a tight, slick bun. I was called a poodle, people said it looked like burnt macaroni and cheese. I just wanted to be&#8230;normal. I always wondered why I couldn&#8217;t be one of those Hispanic girls that had the really long pin-straight hair. Instead, I got unlucky and ended up with this mess. My mom worked at a big bank in Manhattan, and she ALWAYS had her hair straight. Why was I so different? So I asked her to do the same thing to me that my black friends in school got done. The one in the box with the girl that was smiling seemingly harder than I ever had. She agreed to do the relaxer, but what I didn&#8217;t know was that it burned worse than anything I had ever felt before. &#8220;You wanted it,&#8221; she said, &#8220;beauty takes pain.&#8221; That was the first time I ever heard that phrase. I hoped that she thought my curly hair was beautiful too, which she did, but I knew that this would wear off sooner or later.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>After washing my hair out, I was so excited. My hair was a bit stiff, but it was better than the poofy, tangled knots that took almost a half of a bottle of detangler to comb out. My mom and I began to comb my hair, and some of it fell out. I thought it was normal, but as the days passed, the balls of hair that I was removing from my brush grew larger and larger. Why did I want this? Why wasn&#8217;t I happy like the other little girls? Why was I more devastated that it was possible that I could never do this again and my hair would never be normal? I still wanted it. The burn, slowly churning out each and every one of my kinks. It was lifeless, but no one made fun of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why was it that I went to the Dominican hair salon to get these relaxers hand made, just potent enough so that my hair would lay flat but gentle enough that my hair wouldn&#8217;t fall out? Why did I sit in that soft, black chair for hours getting my hair blown out at a temperature so hot I would have to dig my nails into the armrests? What was I trying to hide? I&#8217;m trying to relax. Relax so that I can embrace my roots, but why should I because people embraced me once I relaxed my roots?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<strong>Relaxed<\/strong>, stream of consciousness\/reflection. Selena Castro.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The laws of science say that you can take something and make nothing out of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1152,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-159","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/159\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sac3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}