According to this rule black learners cannot wear dreadlocks, have an afro, cut their hair or even wear braids....What exatly are they to do with their hair i asked myself apparently they were only allowed to have relaxed hair. a couple of questions ran through my mind as this makes no sense at all.
- How do you relax a child whose in grade1? do u know how those chemical burn your scalp while relaxing? u know small children play however they please and get all kinds of dirt on their hair so how do you then clean that child up because cant wash relaxed hair as your please. Dont they in essence end more untidy?
- What realy is the real reason for this "rule"? so white kids can have natural hair and black kids cant?
What baffled me was that for such a hot topic no parent actually called to tell their side of the story, students, uncles and aunts and only 1 dad called in, emailed or tweeted. I know that most of our parents never had the opportunities that we have today so they feel our opportunities should not be wasted on something as trivial as hair... you see if only our parents and those who make decisions on their behalf could stop acting like they are doing us a favour and realise that these oppotunities are our rights, were our rights to begin with.
Then I started wondering why we (us black people) made such a huge deal when our schools want to dictate to us how to wear our hair when we put our own children through the torture of growing their hair to look "beautiful", haven't I seen young children with weaves, braids, relaxed hair and forth? Why are we so obsessed with hair? How can we not be judged if we ourselves judge ourselves, girls with weaves hate on girls with natural hair and vice versa....
So the way I see it, we cant decide and accept for ourselves what our definition of beautiful is so the white people decide for us just like they used our hair to determine our race they defining beautiful for us.
Mbali S
