Category Archives: RACE

Love Your Natural + Resources for “Going Natural”

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This post is primarily aimed at those who’ve gone natural or dreaded their hair.  What kinds of responses did (or do) to get from others?  Have you noticed a difference?  I’ve heard the comments.  My nephew was discouraged or at most “tolerated” for wanting to dread his hair.  Fortunately he had a mother who wore dreads and she supported his desire to wear his hear however he wanted it.  But, what’s up with those that discouraged him? Most said that it was because they wanted to protect him from the racism he would experience.  I don’t doubt that that is a valid premise, but how much do we need to give up to be accepted?  And if we are only accepted by changing ourselves, are we really being accepted?   Most cultures can get up, get in the shower, wash and shake their hair, and go.

Who Needs to Accept, Us or Them?

I know that twenty and thirty years ago I straightened my hair to fit in.  That’s what the women around me did and so did I.  A funny thing happened though a couple of years ago, I cut my hair for a photo shoot and decided to not relax it anymore.  After the relaxed hair grew out and was cut off, I found my own natural texture and I “loved it.”  Now I can blow dry it straight when I want a different look and wear natural when I want to. To think I was putting those toxic chemicals on my scalp for years and didn’t even need to.  And, as I got older, I was adding dye too when I could have used a natural henna.  I had done it so long that I didn’t realize the world had changed but I hadn’t, for people that were not of African American heritage actually liked my hair and commented more positively than “my own peeps.”

Resources for Going Natural

I also remember feeling very weird and out of place at an African American event at Howard University when most people were natural and at the time my hair was relaxed.  One of the presenters actually made a comment about us people with “fried hair.”  Fortunately, now we have more support if we wish to go natural, from sites like Naturally Curly, Carol’s Daughter, Curly Nikki , and Uncle Funky’s Daughter. I know in the past I relaxed my hair and my daughters’ hair because it was easier to maintain.  We probably were also subconsciously programmed to think that we “looked better too”.  Now we’ve got resources to help with the transition if we choose that route.  But, the goal is to love yourself and feel free enough to choose your way of expressing yourself without judgement.  Well that’s our food for thought for today.

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Race and Hair: Militancy, Image, and Politics

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I remember during the presidential elections, when opponents were trying to disparage Michelle Obama, they put up a picture of her with an Afro.  They also negatively portrayed she and President Obama’s fist bump in the same picture while clothing him in Muslim garb.  (Don’t even get me started about diversity and religion, that’s a whole other series.)   So, I could empathize with my niece in being cautious about going natural in today’s business world for I too was subjected to the playful jeers of being called “Florida Evans and Angela Davis.”  I was even shown the traditional “black power fist ” (reminiscent of the Black Power movement) when I wore my hair natural.  Surprisingly most of the comments were from my own family.  If my family felt this way, what could I expect from a world still engulfed in issues of race, identity, and challenges accepting diversity and difference?  So even  though I’ve stopped chemically relaxing my hair, I’m still blow drying it straighter than it was before I relaxed it.  What’s up with that?  I’m still processing.

What subconscious fears, messages, and memories are associated with the these figures that I was jokingly and condescendingly associated with?

BTW.  I see it as an honor to be associated with either of these two trailblazers and sheroes. According to an online biography, Esther Rolle (Florida Evans on Good Times)  “Compelled to fight racial stereotypes, insisted before accepting the series that a strong father figure be central in the show (actor John Amos).   She even left the show for a season protesting the negative role model perpetuated by Jimmie Walker’s jive-talking J.J. character.   Angela Davis was indeed controversial, but must be admired for fighting for what she believed in.  Today she is still fighting for justice by fighting against the prison industrial complex that has become today’s sanctioned form of human enslavement providing a steady supply of cheap prison labor for big business at the expense of rehabilitation.

 So let’s talk  candidly about hair, militancy, and image.  Do you think that some of our reactions to wearing our hair natural are subconscious fears from being associated with those who have been political targets , ostracized, and labeled as militant?   And to those baby boomers who are not African American, what images do natural hair conjure?

Please don’t just read and nod, share your opinions.

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Race and Marriage: The Final Frontier

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Baha’ullah writes, ” Glory not that you love your country, but that you love your kind for the earth is one country and mankind its citizens.” 

So many people now of late are speaking of assimilation (melting pot) as the only way to live together in harmony.  Instead of welcoming diversity and learning about it, far too many fear what is different and seek to subjugate or annihilate that which they refuse to try to understand.  The same sun warms us all.  The same light gives us vision. The same red blood runs through our veins.  We truly are one people living on one planet and our strength is in our vision of seeing and acknowledging our unity and our diversity.  That will probably happen when we finally learn that there is only one human race and allow it to play out in our language, conversations, and beliefs.

We Must Create a New Language of Oneness

We’ve got to get rid of terms like “race” , “inter-racial” and “mixed” and create a new language of oneness.  Science has already proved that we are one human race and the “divisive terms of races as we live them now” are not real.  Many people profess to believe in equality and oneness, until it comes to marriage.  Perhaps marriage is the final frontier to traverse to prove to the skeptics, doubters, and racists, that in reality we are all the same specie. What do you think?  How do you view marriages between people of different ethnicities?  Would you marry someone of a different ethnicity, color, or religion than you?  What about if it were your children?  Since there is ONLY ONE HUMAN race, how do you feel about getting rid of man-made, divisive, and erroneous terms?  And what are your suggestions for bringing about the oneness and conciliation that our world is literally dying for lack of?

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Memorial Day: Honoring, Respecting, and Valuing ALL Life

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How can we befittingly pay tribute to those we wish to memorialize?

I think we best honor the dead when we truly appreciate, respect, and value ALL LIFE!  Perhaps we can all agree on the universal benefit of focusing on the value of all human life, whether it is a fetus or elderly, able or disabled, black or white, rich or poor, homeless or decadently housed, on foreign or American soil, whether Christian or Moslem, Buddhist or Bahá’í, gay or straight, male or female, employed or unemployed, sick or healthy, or famous or ordinary.   Diverse people remember, honor, and celebrate the dead in different ways.  Some somberly mourn their losses in rituals and visits to cemeteries, while others celebrate the life of the deceased by focusing on and valuing and appreciating the lives of the deceased.   What can you learn from the lives of those who are now on the other side of the sod?  What do you choose to remember?

Memorial Day offers an opportunity and  occasion to:

1. Stop and reflect on the value of every human life.

2. Examine the roles we individually and collectively play to make a difference during our own brief sojourn here.

3. Remember what is worth remembering about those who have passed on.

The ones we memorialize may be military, ancestors, friends, family members, religious figures, or someone totally unrelated, but whose lives and deaths have contributed positively to our understanding, opportunities, and freedoms.   It is an opportunity to learn from the past so that our lives will be more meaningful.

A lot of lives have been silenced in our history because of their diversity or beliefs and in the recent earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wars. The suffering and pain continue long after the media has turned its attention to the next disaster or sensation.  Let’s not forget them.  What can you do to ease the suffering, change a life, and raise the esteem of the hopeless?  Remember, it is better to light one candle than to continually curse the darkness.  This memorial day, who will you light a candle for?

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Let’s Talk Race!

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The Onion Network did a spoof on race on their satirical internet news show.  A pretty young 16-year old white girl stabs her classmate to death with a screwdriver.  The judge declares that she is to be tried as an adult 300 pound black man.  Her mother replies, “We’re going to make sure that Hanna is treated with the sympathy and sensitivity that she as a photogenic white girl deserves.“ Her father laments, “Nobody deserves to be treated as a black man!“ They went on to say if she had to be tried as an African- American, at least make her a celebrity or a “stunningly beautiful Filipino.”  FUNNY? INSENSITIVE? CREATIVE SATIRE? ENTERTAINING PARODY? EDUCATIONAL? INFORMATIVE? {NOW, BE AWARE: THIS IS NOT TRUE} But it does make you think, doesn’t it?

Please comment and tell me what you think.

While the above satire is not true, many incidents of race are.  The above fake story on the Onion network had about 1000 tweets and 137,941 views in just two days of its release on January 23rd when I looked at it on the 25th.  From, some of the comments after the Youtube video (which had over 71,000 views), some people actually thought it was true and were admittedly very angry about it.  But, why, incite anger?  As I’ve said before, “If you don’t want people playing the race card, then take it out of the deck!”   I’m trying real hard to not think of race, but when I see reminders of reality through realistic faux news like this, and REAL stories like, NAACP fears another lynching in Mississippi, and the Governor of Maine tells the NAACP to “Kiss my butt,” and a Louisiana Judge Refusing an Inter-racial Marriage,  it causes me to go hmmm.  But, what’s your take?  Now, to be fair, these are three instances that cause alarm, we have even more examples of us working together, colorblind, in unity.  So, to balance the story, please share stories of where race unity is working too and racism does not exist!

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.