How the Atlantic Lives In My Roots

Up until the age of 7, my mother insisted that she would brush my hair every morning before school. I would whine and complain at hard she was pulling my hair to where she would respond with a light hit on the head with the brush she was using and say, "Aguantate, I'm almost done." I never really understood why she did this until I started to brush my hair myself. It all started in the second grade, I would go out and play with all the boys in recess, my hair would get messy, and my boy classmates would ridicule me: "Your hair looks like a mop." "You look like a rat." "Are you even a girl?" When my mother brushed my hair she was attempting to make me look presentable, school-appropriate or in better words teachable. As Eddie mentioned in his talk, black women's oppression starts with black girls starting at the age of 5. From the age of 5, black women are being oppressed for something as simple as their hair. They are not allowed to focus on their school-work because their appearance is far too distracting for their classmates and maybe even their teachers. Schools in my town of Lawrence have struggled in years past to meet the academic needs of its students and now through Eddie's talk makes me wonder a plethora of questions. If kids from Lawrence were white and not Latino would they struggle as much in school? Would they be more teachable to the primarily white teachers because of their race? Is the distraction of being unpresentable or unkempt, whether that be a messy uniform or messy hair, making kids from Lawrence unteachable? Why is it that a white student with the same infractions is given a lesser punishment or no punishment at all in the school systems than a black student? The list goes on.
People tend to avoid the whole race conversation. It's far too awkward and uncomfortable and is often an issue that is overlooked not only in society but in main-stream politics. It's okay to talk about women's oppression, but when it becomes a conversation about black/brown women's oppression the walls automatically go up. As Eddie mentioned, the Women's March is a perfect example of this. At the Women's March, all these so-called white feminists show up and demand that their bodies are respected, raving against Trump and all the other masogynistic assholes (as they should). Before I continue, I would like to provide the definition of feminism: the advocacy of woman's rights based on the equality of sexes. Pretty simple, right. If the women who attend the Women's March are feminists, where are they at the Black Lives Matter Movement when black women are losing their sons due to police brutality? Where are they at a pride parade where LGBTQ+ women are constantly culprits of discrimination in the workforce, housing, etc? Hot take, they aren't feminists. Advocacy for women's rights includes all women, black women, Latino women, LGBTQ women. When these white women do not show up to advocate for all women, they too are contributing to the oppression of black women, as they have repeatedly done throughout history. For example, Gone with the Wind, arguably a classic, portrays black woman as inferior to the white woman and like the stereotypical working-nanny character who is uneducated. Although this is an upgrade from the non-human sexual reproduction machine black women were during the times of slavery, this still paints the black woman as inferior and promotes white supremacy. If a white woman continues to only stand up for only white-woman issues instead of women issues than I believe we are no better than we were during slavery. White woman continues to oppress black women and continue to promote white supremacy and black inferiority.
The fact that stood out most to me in Eddie's talk was the statistic about black doctors. Although black people consist of 13% of the population, only 5.7% of all doctors are black. Based on history this is not a surprising statistic, but it does upset me that  5.7% of black doctors who hone the same education are seen as less qualified or less approachable based on their race. Eddie mentioned that they get fewer patients because white people approximately half of our population are less willing to have a black doctor. Although they claim it is for comfort, I think it is racial-bias. Why aren't people willing to have black doctors. They went to med school, did the hard work and sacrifice and are not rewarded because people are unwilling to interact with them based on the color of their skin. This is part of the reason it bothers me so much when someone says that racism and discrimination no longer exist today. It is alive and kicking and it will never go away, but the simple fact of dealing with issues head-on will help aid this situation, but the minute the topic of race comes into conversation walls go up and the classic "but I'm not racist" almost instinctively is uttered from a white mouth. People need to start talking about race and maybe start admitting that yea, maybe they are a little racially biased. Weathering is alive and kicking. Although my ancestors lived through slavery and I didn't the n-word still has the same effect. I am still feeling the weight of the oppression of black women. Black women's oppression still lives, it lives in the roots of my curly hair.