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Anyone who has relaxed their hair knows that the first few days after you come out of the salon or the bathroom sink with your newly silky hair are magical. Then the new growth starts kicking in and its a lot of work to parse through the new growth and the hair that’s been relaxed.

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As far as I was concerned, she might as well have told me she hoped baby North didn’t look black, because blackness was ugly.

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“You’re just gonna let her cut it all off and run around like a boy? What will her boyfriend think?”

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But as fate would have it, I briefly dated a Jamaican woman in Louisiana. And when I told her I was getting locks, she talked me out of it.

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The key difference, of course, is that I didn’t want to kill dreadlock-wearers, but I did pay heart-pounding, minute, stereoscopic attention to anyone, anywhere, that I saw wearing dreadlocks.

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MS. “LET ME TELL YOU HOW I WENT NATURAL”

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You can be the most beautiful woman in the world, but without Beyoncé’s weave, you’re just beautiful for a black girl.

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If you don’t understand all the fuss, think about what thing people could do that would make you feel violated.

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Black or latino barber shops can be some of the most homophobic spaces for gay men of color.

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Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.