Ramona Afrika: 1992 e03 - Vanessa & Patty Mirrors

By Naiwu Osahon

African women are losing sense of self-worth. Their idea of feminine elegance is to wear white female hair styles. Flip through any issue of our picture magazines to see how far this disturbing trend of self-hate by our females has gone. No class of black women is exempt: film and sports stars, musicians, students, models, literary gurus, politicians, academics, business executives, civil servants, religious leaders and followers, unemployed or working class spinsters and housewives, are trying desperately to pass for white. They are all pampered as teenage daughters, with charming African hair styles, which they promptly abandon for white female hair styles as soon as they become of age to choose hair styles for themselves.

Advertisers of cosmetic products are the architects of the assault on our sense of self-worth, telling our women that light skin and long, shinny, bodiless, straight, white female hair styles, are the ideal for our women. The advertisers hide the truth that light skin colour age faster than dark skin, and that every race has natural hair styles that suit and complement her. Africans have the greatest variety of elegant, feminine, beautiful, sexy, creative, ennobling, envied, open to further innovations, female hair styles, than all the other tribes of the world put together. Our women have hundreds of matchless teasers from the ancient Nubian varieties to the modern African tribal traffic stoppers.

Over two hundred million of our relatives died on the run or during the Middle Passage. It was 400 years of unbridled rape of our women and the inhuman and ungodly castration of our men; 400 years of slaving like beasts of burden without pay on the plantations of Bible totting slavers; 400 years of not knowing what we did wrong to be visited with so much hate, violence and destruction; 400 years of not knowing if and when it would end, and it has not ended 600 years after.

The proper African female hair styles fall in the range of low/full cut, to thick, rich, woolly, curly, alluring, lively, dramatic, healthy, luscious, moist, sheer, knotted, kinky, plaited, jumbled, tangled, crown of part-collected, massed or cascading hair, confirming (like the peacock’s crown for the birds’ kingdom, or the lion’s for the animals’ dominion), our females’ ordained status as the human queens: brave, proud, confident, real, important, dignified, feminine, irresistible.

African women, wearing hot combed, straight, stretched, compacted or other white female hair styles, look inferior, like cheap substitutes and slaves, standing besides their true to nature white female peers; and like grandmas besides their proudly African peers with African female hair styles. They invariably look like white headed black dolls, doubly empty inside, or like cats emerging from a forced bath of hot oil: ugly, slimy and abnormal. So, one is tempted to ask, do our women wear white female hair styles out of a feeling of self-hate or because they are angry and want to shock and terrorize with their, I don’t care how I look pose, blacks they are ashamed of and whites that reject them?

There was this actress looking like a precious jewel in her African hair style at the Pan-African Night of Tributes in Los Angeles and a few hours later, was looking like grandma in her white female hair style, at a Pre-Oscar Gala. Every April, Ebony magazine features black College Queens. All of them wear white female hair styles that make them look like jokers and pretenders to the throne of beauty queens of any tribe, black or white. Obviously, a great deal of confusion is going on in our women’s heads at the moment. A kind of a split personality crisis. If they cannot change their ‘black skin blemish’ fast enough, they can at least, jump start this with white female hair styles.

Of course, 400 years of slavery dealt a devastating blow to our feeling of self-worth. While Hiroshima bombing happened over a few days and the Jewish holocaust lasted a couple of years, without causing either of them the loss of cultural focus and identity, our dehumanization went on for 400 years and it was brutal and total. It obliterated our languages, culture, traditional mores, religions, history, individual names and identity. It was 400 years of no industry, learning, or progress, because we were running and hiding, not knowing who they would kidnap or murder next.

Over two hundred million of our relatives died on the run or during the Middle Passage. It was 400 years of unbridled rape of our women and the inhuman and ungodly castration of our men; 400 years of slaving like beasts of burden without pay on the plantations of Bible totting slavers; 400 years of not knowing what we did wrong to be visited with so much hate, violence and destruction; 400 years of not knowing if and when it would end, and it has not ended 600 years after.

The Jews and the Japanese received compensation for the terrible wrong done to them but our tormentors do not consider us human enough to deserve their apology and reparations. We do not count in their records of human history, not even as a footnote, and we are powerless to exert restitution because we are not united. When men are powerless, their female folks tend to ride with the winners as booties, or in the hope of some of the master’s spoils robbing off on them.

In a recent Ebony magazine feature on black female senior executives, directors, and vice presidents of some leading US corporations, all of them wore white female hair styles that did severe damage to their look and age. They obviously believed they reached their merited heights by being dowdy and loyal servants. White leaders and bosses are not likely to be telling themselves, “I trust her absolutely because she is not true to her nature?” There is courage and strength in not living a lie, which all sane leaders and bosses, whites inclusive, recognize and quietly respect. Our girls cannot hide their basic nature under alien and unbecoming hair styles and assume that all is well.

Senior black female holders of political offices in the US government, including Michelle, our first, first lady, think, passing for white with white female hair styles, encouraged their ascendance or appointment, and that foreign white leaders would resent them if they looked their natural African selves from head to toe. For a start, it makes them look older than their real age, unattractive and undignified. It definitely offends the trust implied in the truism that: “real is more likely to be honest and reliable to deal with.” That is a conflict we all face right now, we are not real but we think we are, or do not care.

The current US Ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Renee Sanders, is an exception. She proudly wears dreadlocks and we love her madly for her courage. We trust her; see her as our own; as a sister and a friend who wants the best for us. It is an instinctive feeling because she identifies famously with us. Another great Diaspora African mommy and beauty is Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of the US Congress. I wish all our women, at what ever age, would emulate her and Robin Rene Sanders. They look ageless, regal, strong, trustworthy, dependable and beautiful. They inspire our confidence by being proudly African. That is what African women not contaminated by Western decadence look like. It confirms that the Queen of Sheba’s extended family has not been completely wiped out by European’s plastic culture.

We have great female poets who, despite their age, could still win the Miss World title if they would be true to their African nature. We have others in public eye, people others look up to, such as artistes, authors, film stars, who ought to know better, in terms of the correct public image to project, who do not feel there is anything wrong with their unnatural hair styles.

We have daughters with long straight hair, of course, who look becoming because they are natural, but we also have black female TV hosts who wear pathetic, short or long, weightless, graceless, revolting, fake styles, thinking they look cute. Such hosts would not get me out of bed in the morning to watch a ‘Good Morning’ TV show?

When a Nigerian won the Miss World title in 2001, she was looking a delectable African queen. A year later, after her European sponsors had taken her around the world as their queen, she visited Nigeria looking like a masquerade. No one could recognize her. She had added 30 years to her age in twelve months, with her European hair style.

Buy this Book at Amazon.com! When African American men were wearing pressed or hot combed hair styles not too long ago, many of us pined and prayed for the phase to pass. Our urgent critical worry now is that we may not find proudly African sisters to marry by the morning. May be we should buy our females, mirrors to look at themselves with the African eye every morning, before stepping out into the world? Better still, we could send them the mirrors left behind in Africa in payment for slaves by slavers? That way we might find some value for the mirrors, by using them to see what the slavers are still doing to our daughters’ mentality because, Diaspora Africans are continental Africans’ mirrors in modernity.

Female talk show hosts on African television routinely wear white female hair styles. When asked why, some admitted influence of their mentors on US television. There was this presenter the other day on an African TV, with long, straight, artificial hair, drooping all over her face to below her shoulders. She was shaking her head every few seconds to re-arrange the hair, and using her hands to transfer hair falling over her eyes to the back of her ears in typical white female manner. It was a lot of trouble for her, but that is not the issue here. On the programme, she was admonishing her listeners for not being true to their nature. “We should be proud of our culture, stick with it, and show it off to the world,” she said, stoned face. I had to touch my television set to assure myself, I was not dreaming.

When a Nigerian won the Miss World title in 2001, she was looking a delectable African queen. A year later, after her European sponsors had taken her around the world as their queen, she visited Nigeria looking like a masquerade. No one could recognize her. She had added 30 years to her age in twelve months, with her European hair style.

The typical African right now, would tell you he or she is proudly African, wearing a suit in our noon day heat, and answering names like John, Jane, Stella or Stephen. The young men are wearing hair styles the females should be wearing, with earrings and all to boot; the women are looking like scarecrows or extraterrestrial beings, repulsive, masculine and strange to our environment, in compacted, stretched, alien, unbecoming hair styles. They look neither black nor white from bleaching to sore point, with accentuated stretch marks all over the covered body.

Non-African tribes that would not try to change their nature as a race, by switching wholesale to African hair styles, religion, fashion, or answering African names, or burning black with injurious health consequences, that include kidney ruin, aggravated or heightened diabetes and hypertension, are difficult to fault for thinking that black IQ might be lower than that of the Chimpanzee.

NAIWU OSAHON Hon. Khu Mkuu (Leader, Pan-African Movement world-wide); Ameer Spiritual (Spiritual Prince) of the African race; MSc. (Salford); Dip.M.S; G.I.P.M; Dip. I.A (Liv.); D. Inst. M; G. Inst. M; G.I.W.M; A.M.N.I.M. Awarded: Key to the City of Memphis, Tennessee, USA; Honourary Councilmanship, Memphis City Council; Honourary Citizenship, County of Shelby; Honourary Commissionership, County of Shelby, Tennessee and a silver trophy from Morehouse College, Atlanta, USA for his contributions to the unity and uplift of his race.