Personal Narrative Essay: Understanding My Black Family

Growing up with my mother, who was white and Peruvian, and her side of the family was damaging when it came to understanding my Black heritage and also understanding how to take care of my Black body. My mother always had my hair in braids because she didn’t know how to take care of it, whenever it was out my white family members would always play with it and call me a lion, my cousins called my braids ghetto, and I just remember laughing along with them, pretending like their words didn’t effect how I saw myself. When I started going natural it was a difficult process, instead of my once luscious curls I had dried damage ends which looked horrible to me, I often was depressed my freshman year because of my hair and my lack of knowledge and
Little Black girls have chemicals slapped on their heads because their parents fear the scrutinization of their community or because they think the little girls hair is too hard to manage. Not having out hair properly cared for and watching it break off because of chemical treatments and heat treatments (which led to the stereotype that black girls can’t grow hair) worsens the mental state and lowers the self-esteem of Black girls. Comedian Chris Rock recounted his own experience when his daughter tearfully approached him asking, “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?” (I wonder how she came up with that idea?) Through generations, having “good hair” has become status quo for African American women. Although it’s original purpose for helping Black women survive during slavery and Jim crow has faded and even though we have had movements celebrating natural Black beauty, hair texture alteration among African American women has a firm grip on Black women today. The need to have “Good hair” or what society tell us is good hair has caused the self-esteem of the Black Woman, even self-esteem the Black child, to shrink more than 4c hair does once it