Black Women Before Extension Epidemic

(This is not my photo, I forwarded it from another FB poster)

My Social Media Re-Post:

I re-posted this photo on social media with no other words. A Sister Pushed Back “I have to push back a little on this post women were wearing wigs/ straightening their hair/ relaxing their hair for years before the black power movement. Not saying I support one thing over the next, but it’s empowering and uplifting to know that black women can and are so versatile in the way we decide to wear our hair. The weave is just another means of self-expression (in my opinion) and truth be told lots of women have natural hair and choose to wear weave as a protective style.” Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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My Response

Sister, when our “self-expression” and “versatility” are motivated by white psychic and physical abuse as ours has been during and after our captivity, it is not a testimony to pre-captivity freedom or to Afrikan cultural artistry. It is manipulated obedience! Manipulated because forced obedience would garner our resistance. Surrender to force stimulates internal conflict that feeds our resistance. Manipulation, on the other hand, hides both the manipulator and our surrender. As the psychologist, Nana Amos N. Wilson would say, “It’s a very slick system.” Before what Nana Asa Hilliard called “trouble” (European invasion and domination) our hair variations had meanings assigned to them by our cultural and ethnic groups. Some could only be worn if you were married, others signaled initiation or marked a certain status. Our (women and men’s) versatile expressions of hair and body adornment were of our own making for our own group’s purposes. We considered them beautiful because form follows function - functions we chose to move us forward. Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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Continued…

After captivity and the continuing European domination to this day, our variations atrophied and most of what remained were Afrikan attempts to get relief from oppression or affirmation and favor by the oppressor or our eyes distorted by the blood of the lash or the pains of starvation. These were survival adaptations. Still even in the 18th and 19th centuries, many resisted the “hot comb” which was marketed first to white women in catalogs like Bloomingdales in 1886. Ida B Wells’ style is but one example of this resistance. The “natural,” the “fro,” “cornrows,” and even “locks” of the ’60s and ’70s were but other examples of our many attempts to reject the Eurocentric imposed standards of beauty and psychic control. They were symbols of rejection and our burgeoning attempts to see beauty coming from service to our independent needs and desires. They were part of the “I’d rather die on my feet than to keep livin’ on my knees” movement. That line is from JB’s Say It Loud, I’m Black and Proud. That’s why he traded his “conk” for a “fro.” That’s why the style became beautiful the form was following a function established by our group to serve our purposes. The many variations of “fros” or “naturals” and even music lyrics were guided by that! Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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Continued… When our celebration of Afrikan hair and body adornment artistry in KMT, Mali, Zimbabwe, before “trouble” is used to justify or hide our obedience to psychic

abuse and manipulation, we fall deeper into the “sunken place” - psychologically possessed and controlled by others. From that place, they assign the meaning to our styles and symbols and our function becomes primarily to serve aliens - the manipulators. The forms of our hair and other artistic self-expression follow - encouraging us to laud and imitate aliens, their culture, their values, their ways, looks, smells, habits, styles, etc, and to surrender to them while deluding ourselves that we’re acting independently, powerfully, and even beautifully. From that deeply wounded and delusional place, we will also attack anyone who exposes the manipulator or the obedience. Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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When you know the connection of “hair” and power in our culture, you understand that this is no trivial matter of individual self-expression. There is power in our hair! Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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Capitulation Neither weaves, Jehri curls, “fried-died-and-laid-to-the-side” styles, nor the male stocking caps, “conks,” nor the infamous “process” were symbols of our pushing back on Eurocentric psychic or cultural oppression. They were capitulations to it.

Asians built their businesses on it! None of those hairstyle expressions were lifting a pre-captivity cause; nor were they symbolic challenges to white domination. They were NOT attempts to connect us to our various ancient Afrikan hair traditions where we assigned meaning to styles to serve our self-determined culture and purpose. In contrast to those depressed styles, some do use extensions and wigs to lift Afrikan traditions. While they are in the minority, I applaud their effort. Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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The Illusion-Delusion Dance The alien projects an illusion - a fake image designed to deceive : “freedom to choose” among a set (pre-defined by them) is equal to “freedom.” Due to injected oppression, we create a matching and masking delusion - a denial of reality : “self-expression” and “individual choice” regardless of origin or group impact - empowers us and equals “freedom.” This delicate dance - the “illusion-delusion dance” - must not be disturbed.

When I do, I’m asked or told: • “Why don’t you just leave Black women’s’ hair alone?” By extension then: • why don’t I just leave Black musical expression - alone, the “gap-year” phenomenon - alone, sexual expression in the Black community alone? • All of these are just variations of Afrikan freedom of choice and empowering “self-expression,” right? • They are not connected to oppression and have no bearing on the political, economic, and cultural health of our group, right? • Plus to be concerned about “all that” is just too old, too traumatic, and too divisive, right? Your local Jewish, Asian, and European shop owners and entertainment producers concur; or should that be - conquer? Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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Beautiful and Loved

Our women, men, and people are beautiful and loved - always have been; always will be - even as we navigate oppression, wearing our hair and adorning our bodies in various ways - sometimes one step forward and two back. Still, we don’t need to get it twisted or we’ll never find our way home. Maybe we need to twist it back or throw some healing waters on it so it will “go back” naturally. Wekesa O. Madzimoyo Sept. 25, 2021 Copyright © 2021 AYA Educational Institute | 09-25-2021

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Get Out! Our eyes don’t see; our brain sees based on its conditioning. #Manipulated Obedience