{"id":580,"date":"2008-08-19T11:51:23","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T15:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=580"},"modified":"2008-08-19T11:51:23","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T15:51:23","slug":"continuing-racial-prejudice-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=580","title":{"rendered":"Continuing racial prejudice cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Suszanna Clarke
\nTuesday, August 19 2008
\nnewsday.co.tt<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

African HairBack when I had decided I had grown tired of having straight hair, I\u2019d cut it all off, leaving just an inch or two of my own naturally curly hair remaining. <\/p>\n

I had loved it \u2014 the ability to wash it everyday, not having to worry about the wind messing it up and not having to buy any styling products other than a bottle of gel. The reaction of others was different; some loved it, others hated it. It also had the unpredicted benefit of getting rid of an ex who had been hovering hopefully in the background for years. Later he told me the first time he saw it he\u2019d swore I had a male twin. My boyfriend at the time loved it. It reminded him of Maracas. He\u2019d said. All the waves.
\n
\nOne of my co-workers at the time was upset when he saw my new haircut. Oh God Clarke, I hate it, he informed me. He also told me that I\u2019d made a big mistake. Before, when my hair was long and straight I could have passed, he\u2019d said. Now I couldn\u2019t. When I\u2019d asked him what he\u2019d meant he\u2019d said with my hair the way it was before I could have fitted in to any crowd \u2013 Chinese, whites, Indian, mixed. Now, he informed me, I looked like I was from behind the bridge. Then he promptly ended the aggressive\/passive track he\u2019d been putting down for a couple of years. <\/p>\n

A few weeks after this he\u2019d come up behind me and pulled my hair. \u201cBut Suszanna\u201d, he\u2019d said, \u201cYou have good hair! Not as good as mine of course but it real soft. I didn\u2019t think that was your natural hair at all.\u201d I didn\u2019t see him for about a year after this incident; I guess my vociferous reaction to this comment may have been part of the reason why. With my hair back at an acceptable length and my ability to \u201cpass\u201d restored (since my hair was still curly but apparently a \u201cgood\u201d curly), his interest in me rekindled. He was once again eager to be seen with me in public. I however, remained unimpressed. <\/p>\n

Years before this incident and at a different place of work, another co-worker \u2013 a woman this time \u2013 had stood watching a woman and a little girl walking past our office one afternoon. The little girl\u2019s hair was done up in little plaits and on each plait was a bubble with a clip on the end. After they had walked out of sight my then co-worker turned to me and asked why do black people put so many things in their children\u2019s hair. Very young and at that time too polite to answer her in the manner that she deserved I\u2019d told her I don\u2019t know. Oh I\u2019m sorry, she\u2019d responded, I didn\u2019t realise you were Indian. And she\u2019d laughed hysterically. She\u2019d then went on to talk, once again, about the straightness of her sister\u2019s hair, that she never had to comb it, that clips fell right out of it. It was a source of great pride for her, which I hadn\u2019t been able to understand then, and a topic she brought up often, together with the fairness of the sister\u2019s husband. <\/p>\n

Recently a girl I know was called into the manager\u2019s office at the bank where she worked. When she had been looking for a job before she\u2019d been advised to relax her hair as it would make her more \u201cacceptable\u201d to potential employers. When she started her new job she\u2019d gone back natural after a few months. The manager had called her in to tell her that she had to relax her hair in order to keep her job. Hers was not the look the bank was trying to portray. They moved her away from customer services until her hairstyle was more \u201csatisfactory\u201d. When she refused to change her hair they declared her position redundant and fired her. <\/p>\n

Racial prejudice takes many different forms. There\u2019s the overt \u2013 the Spanish Basketball Federation picture that showed the national team pulling back their eyes to make them look Chinese and the London mayor\u2019s description of black children as \u201cpicaninnies\u201d with watermelon smiles. Then there\u2019s the covert. I had a co-worker who only spoke to me when she realised my dad was black. She thought my father was Indian and she refused to have anything to do with \u201cthose people\u201d. <\/p>\n

The irony of all that was she was terribly proud of her thick, black hair, the result of a grandmother who was part Indian. <\/p>\n

The worse thing about racial prejudice is how much it narrows us and how it stunts what we are and what we can become. When we see someone in only stereotyped terms, we deny ourselves the chance to know that person as they really are. If we expect someone to be good in something, bad at others, to eat certain foods or be a certain way because of their race, that narrows both us and them. The sad thing is, the very nature of racial prejudice is that most times, we\u2019re not even aware of what we\u2019re doing and what we\u2019re perpetuating and so we pass it on, for another generation to continue the cycle. <\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.newsday.co.tt\/commentary\/0,84682.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Suszanna Clarke Tuesday, August 19 2008 newsday.co.tt Back when I had decided I had grown tired of having straight hair, I\u2019d cut it all off, leaving just an inch or two of my own naturally curly hair remaining. I had loved it \u2014 the ability to wash it everyday, not having to worry about … Continue reading Continuing racial prejudice cycle<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-general-tt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}