My 6 YO African-American daughter told me recently that she wishes her hair would be “swishy like white hair.” She recently tried to unravel her $100 braids because she thought it would make her fake purple hair (which is added to create a protective layer over her curly, dry & brittle hair) more “swishy.” After I explained for the 34th time that the fake hair braids are there to help promote growth of her own natural hair, I stopped myself and considered all the ramifications her new revelation.

Yes, she wants what all her kindergarten cronies have. Otherwise known as a normal rite of passage we all trudged through at young ages. However as the only black child in her kindergarten class, she is facing something that every black kid in America faces: how to accept her hair while all it currently represents is frustration, difference and challenge.

When I recently consulted my female black friends and acquaintances, they nodded in empathy and related stories of their childhoods spent in front of the mirror with a scarf or yarn ribbons hanging down from their head, so they could “swish” the hair back like Marcia Brady.

When I relate her “swishy hair” comment to non-Black people, they say: “Well, I wish I had curly hair!” And this is when I knew I had to speak. Not all of us have been discriminated against because of the texture and style of our hair. Here is one of the many cases being heard about discrimination in schools against black children wearing their hair natural. NATURAL. As in THE WAY IT GROWS OUT OF THEIR HEADS. In New York City. In 2019.

When I knew a cute little brown baby was coming into my life, I consumed every internet article, blog, vlog or YouTube tutorial I could find to learn about black hair and how to care for it. In a nutshell, ya don’t care for it like non-black hair, people. It isn’t merely curly. It’s dry, kinky and often brittle. Cornrows, dreadlocks, twists and other hairdos are protective styles meant to promote growth and general health of the natural hair. They are not militant cultural statements created to offend white people.

For some mystifying reason, random strangers have an opinion about how black hair should or shouldn’t be worn. I was once stopped in a bakery by an old white woman adorned with diamonds and a sickening amount of entitlement, who told me I should really cut my daughter’s hair short because “they all should really wear it short.” I’m not making that up.

So I offer it up to people who do not have kinky, curly African hair: recognize society’s and your own prejudice about black hair. And white people in particular: you don’t know what it feels like to be asked by a school or employer to make your hair conform to the white norm. Or to have come from generations of people who were “freed” from slavery and then told where to sit on the bus. Or have some old white bitch loudly opine about her preferred hairstyle for your entire race. You don’t know what it feels like to be discriminated against, beaten down and beaten up for the color of your skin. So stop saying you wish you had curly hair, because at least you have the choice.

For whatever complicated stupid reason I won’t attempt to explain, but DO fully comprehend, the world has always revered white skin. And hair. And now my daughter has realized at 6 that her natural hair will never “swish.” Thankfully I have not yet experienced any harassment about her hair style (currently cornrows) from her very white school. And I will of course help her on the path to self-acceptance. But I also ask white and other non-African American people who haven’t educated themselves about African hair to consider and acknowledge the role privilege plays with their own socially acceptable and aspirationally swish-able hair.