Wig, Weave, or WTF

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Looking at one or two Black female anchors with their $1,000 sewn in 8' long cadaver weaves strikes me as being as tone deaf as professionally employed Black females sporting tats (they self-consciously cover up with long sleeve blouses or pants depending on where the tatoo artist affixed their particular mark of shame. What is worse, I know a lot of them. To a person they all live in or around Prince Georges (PG) County, MD (which comprises affluent suburbs Southeast of DC, over-indexed by print, broadcast, and television journalists on the DC beat, government workers, skilled trademen, and other associated professionals living in suburban bliss between the two large urban centers of DC and Baltimore) and otherwise known as the "DMV." I swear I sometimes wanna ask 'em when I run into 'em in Bowie or Washington heights what tf is wrong with y'all? You cannot claim that you are conscious when you are doning an expensive, Eurocentric standard of beauty on your nappy head as if it is a superpower; it is the very symbol of white male patriarchy leading to the cognitive dissonance that fosters a divide in our community. Growing up during the seventies on the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement, everyone was still sporting big, glistening, well-shaped, coiffed 'fros. It was an irrefutable beauty statement illustrating Black pride, not merely paying lip service to the sentiment. It was as beautiful as it was liberating. The barbershops and beauty parlors had full sized posters of beautiful sisters and handsome brothers showing the myriad styles we could and did sport back in the day. Then came the anticipated pushback whenever Black folks exhibit any type of agency. In 1973, WABC-NY affiliate anchor Melba Tolliver came on the air sporting a big, huge, glistening afro. The backlash was immediate and overwhelming. WaPo literally lost their mind. Tolliver remained defiant. And one or two other newcasters attempted to follow suit. But the damage was done. They eventually capitulated. And Black women seeking a career in broadcast journalism promptly, dutifully fell into line. So, now we have no representation of the original woman on television, just Black women in whiteface (with the "face" being a one hundred pound Brazilian weave they obediently don to tamp down criticism, assuage white fragility, while appeasing bigotry at the expense of our own self-expression).

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