Shivjeet Parthasarathy, Week 2

'A Hair Piece' by Paulette M. Caldwell, speaks of the unique experiences the author ends up encountering by virtue of the fact that she is a black woman. Her experiences are unique due to the idea that femininity and race are two distinctive identities, and institutions such as the courts fail to see that discrimination can be at the crossroads of these two identities, and not merely one of the two, as was held in the case of Rogers. Similarly, there are a lot of cases where unmarried black women are discriminated against if they're pregnant, due to stigmatized views of promiscuity of black women. Another issue it addresses, is the idea of conformity and subordination increasingly face by black women. In the context of hair, they're expected to not wear braids, for this characterises unprofessionalism and deviancy from the norm. At this juncture, I will draw a parallel to 'Americanah', a novel by Chimamanda Adichie, telling the story of a Nigerian girl who comes to the United States. In the novel, hair is an important symbol of identity. Ifemelu, wants to keep her hair braided, while increasingly, the norm is to see African-American and African women try to get their hair straightened. This is due to the increasingly dominant standards of beauty that are perpetuated by white cultural elements and we are conditioned to see. Specifically to the idea of intersectionality, perhaps the discrimination by hair is also done due to the conditioning by an increasingly white worldview? It surely is a pertinent question that requires very deep contemplation.