Hello Everyone, Long time lurker, first time poster here. This whole hullabaloo has actually brought me out of the woodwork to finally bite the bullet and subscribe. So regarding the original question – how do I feel? I feel frustrated and annoyed at the amount of disrespect being leveled at this community. While any number of people can claim to have “natural” hair based on the hair that grows out of their heads, the “natural hair movement,” as it were, was started by and for black women for all the reasons that have already been stated numerous times throughout this thread. I have no problem with exchanging ideas and/or products with other people. However, people who are not part of this community, and who don’t share in the overall experiences/hardships of black women with regard to hair and general identity issues, calling themselves #teamnatural is extremely misplaced and disrespectful. At this point for me, I’m starting to move past how I feel about it and am starting to move into what I plan on doing about it. I can’t control what other people say about themselves. I can’t stop a white woman from claiming some sort of “natural hair journey” for herself, even though that’s language that clearly originated from this community. However, we are currently at a moment of time in which this has become a line in the sand for me. In my mind, willfully using language and attempting to appropriate an identity which was not created for you is a way of disregarding and disrespecting my unique experience as a black woman. In effect, you’re telling me that me and my experiences don’t matter and are not deserving of respect. Well, I’m not willing to allow myself to be disrespected in that or any other way. So as far as I’m concerned, I plan on disregarding the opinions and/or the very existence of people who disregard me. I’m not willing to give such people any of my time or energy whether that be online or in my day to day life. I’m fully prepared to lose friends and/or acquaintances over this. I’m done trying to educate people about why they should respect my experience, nay my very existence, as a black woman in this society. If you’re not up to speed on the basics of human decency and respect at this point, then I don’t want you anywhere near me. There seem to be a lot of white women who have been so wrapped up in their little privilege bubble that they really don’t have the basics down, which means that there are a lot of them who will simply not make it past my filter. Unfortunately, there also seem to be more than a few black women and other woc who want to act as their apologists. They won’t make it past my filter either. Obviously people are entitled to their opinions, and I’m not going to call people out of their name just because they may have an opinion that is different from mine, but I’m also not willing to waste time debating with people who would support and facilitate those perpetuating the aforementioned disrespectful behaviors. So how is this manifesting itself so far? Well as far as social media is concerned, my index finger has yet to cool off due to how much I’ve had to hit the ignore button. I’m just steadily erasing people from my online consciousness. I sometimes frequent Tumblr, and the #natural-hair and #team-natural tags are rife with white women trying to assert their presence there. I swear at this rate that I will have ignored half of the white women on Tumblr before this is over. Same thing with Twitter. I don’t have an Instagram account, but I would be doing the same there if I did. I had been to the CN website a few times, not a subscriber or anything, but I have gotten rid of the bookmark that I had to her website, and I’ve actively avoided clicking on any articles from her site. I’m saddened that MC (YouTuber) got involved in this. I don’t follow many natural hair YouTubers, but I did like some of her videos. I’m praying that Naptural85 stays out of the fray, because I am subbed to her, and it would kind of break my heart to unsub from her channel. All of this turning my back on people with a differing opinion may seem extreme, but as I said, I’m not willing to support people who are insistent through their words or their actions on moving the “natural hair movement” in a direction that is clearly detrimental to black women. There will be no click, sub or purchasing support from me for any bloggers, vloggers or product manufacturers who do so. As far as how this is manifesting IRL, online communities move a lot faster than “real world” ones. This particular issue is not one that I’ve had to address yet with anyone that I know; although, I’m sure that the issue will rear its ugly head at some point. As already stated, I’m willing go to whatever extreme that I deem necessary to protect what I consider to be in the best interest of the natural hair community specifically and black women and girls in general. Just to end this post on an up note, there are, thankfully, some white women out there who do get it. Here’s a link to a very different kind of Q&A from a white curly reader on BGLH (Black Girl Long Hair):
article I, for one, am more than ready and willing to continue sharing information cross-culturally with women such as Ali in this article who truly understand and respect the need for black women to have spaces unique to us and our experiences.