I celebrate July 18th as my personal Independence Day. On that day in 2005, I cut off all of my chemically relaxed hair and began to wear a short cropped Afro. Leaving the salon that day, the sense of relief and freedom was exhilarating, and that free feeling lasts still. For the first time in decades, I have wash and wear hair, which means I have much more time for other things, and I’m free from worrying about third degree chemical burns or skin charring burns on my scalp, forehead and neck, due to errant curling irons. My beloved husband, who is white, never understood why I would go through such physical pain for want of a hairstyle. Years ago he encouraged me to go natural, but I said, “No way.” I told him and myself that I wanted the flexibility that relaxed hair provides even though I only changed my hairstyle once every couple years

Hair is a very big deal for all women, but it’s an especially tangled issue for black women. Since the emergence of Madame Walker’s black hair care products, black women have used heat, and chemicals like lye, to beat the kink out of their natural hair. The desire to wear white hairstyles exacts a certain kind of price in terms of the time and money it takes to make one’s hair do what it wasn’t meant to do. So now, I ‘rock a ‘fro’, which means I wear my hair in an Afro style. It’s still on the shorter side, but I am determined to grow it out into a ‘bush’ that would make Angela Davis envious. To be honest, a few months ago, I considered getting a longish hairweave or trying a relaxer again, just for a change. But, as I was formulating my plan to launch this site, I found myself checking out white supremacist sites among many, many others. On those community boards, there were a number of entries about how “ugly” black people are, and how even African Americans “did not like their nappy hair”. Otherwise, why would “so many of them” try to wear “white styles”? Right then, I decided. Relaxers will not be a part of my life ever again. Thank God there was no mention of hair color. My hair is natural in texture… if not in color.

At my gym, there’s a young guy who sports the massive, hateful tattoos of white supremacist gangs. They look like these. I have no desire to share my precious gym space with him, but oddly, because we both train seriously, and use the same machines; we find ourselves in close proximity. Each time this happens, I lift my posture, become erect. And thus, standing there with my broad nose, full lips and kinky hair, I say to him wordlessly, “You want me gone. No way. Here I am.”