Hair doesn’t rhyme with Nazi or Army

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I read this article this morning with no small measure of dismay. 

Even on the Natural Nigerian groups facebook page, a member, Nemerem Egbukichi left a thought provoking statement on the issue months ago.

It is something I have been thinking about a lot and now I am finally going to say something.

Every time we (Screwy Haired Girl, Sherese Ijewere and I) organize a meet up, my fellow organizers and I get questions about whether it is an event strictly for natural haired sisters or not. I guess that is expected but, I have come to realize that some of the people that are asking are doing so not casually, but from a real fear of being kicked out if they show up. Shocking right? Think I am exaggerating?

Read what Ladi of Fulani hair wrote on her blog about the advice she got regarding attending (Naturals In the City 3) NITC3.

The organizers are also welcoming happily relaxed girls like me which was a serious concern. My friend told me to lie that I’m transitioning in case someone is vexing, lmao.

Sounds strange? Let me tell you one stranger. Someone once questioned our use of relaxed hair presenters at NITC. According to her, we had no business allowing non-natural haired presenters even gather with, much less address natural haired ladies. Yes, we were just as shocked as you must now be and of course, we threw those vituperations into a bin labeled “insignificant crap”. For the record, everyone is invited to the meet ups – it is not an esoteric gathering. 

This army is not invisible. It is made up of people like you and I. Let us reign in our thoughts and stop before we criticize another person’s decisions. We need to be more tolerant of others. That doesn’t mean that you need to agree with them, you just need to respect the fact that everyone (not just you) is entitled to choosing what path they want to go down.

I will not absolve myself of blame in this. I once questioned the rationale behind being relaxed and at the height of the team-natural/team-relaxed arguments, left one comment on a blog which I now very much regret. 

No-one person can make hair rules that everyone has to live by. If we begin to go in that direction, there will be no limit to what the rules will be. One such one could be that if you have natural hair and use natural products on your hair but eat processed food then you really can’t be natural. I have quite an imagination, lol!

Seriously though, some things are more important. World Peace, Famine/Drought, Poverty, Corrupt governments….shall I go on?

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