Article: Embracing my natural hair, heritage and skin color: Overcoming prejudices.
Okay, so this is not a review. I want to incorporate reviews on natural hair products and so this is a good article to introduce to you what I am about. This a personal account on how I finally accepted myself in its entirety, as a dark skin Latina, Afro Dominican mixed chick female in front of society. This might be a very long article. This might be somewhat of a controversial topic to some but in my eyes its my experience. Okay, so I was born in NYC. I have a Dominican mother. My father wasn’t in my life. My mom was a single mother and this is why I do not claim my Colombian side. However, I do identify with the culture because like I said I lived in NYC and experienced its diverse cultures and danced in many festivals as a kid and in the past even represented colombia in those festivals.
My experience on the Tyra show and how it helped me.
My racial experience as a kid growing up in NY and Dominican republic was normal to me. I was raised in D.R. by my grandma. I visited every summer as a child growing up and stayed there until I had to go back to school. Anyway, I believe in 2007 I appeared in a short segment on the Tyra Show. The day before the segment I was called by a cousin of mine that was going to take part in the focus group and was asked if I wanted to fly to L.A. She just told me they needed a dark skin latina for the show. I had no idea what I was getting into and I’m super shy when it comes to public speaking. I accepted.
Hey, it was a free trip to LA and I got to meet Tyra. I was excited. I flew to LA from NYC. I remember during the segment they asked my cousin how she views me and she said she sees me as “Negra” which means “black” in spanish. My cousin is puertorican and dominican her self. She said it was a term of endearment. She didn’t tell me what she was going to tell me during the show. She told me it was because she was asked not to by producers. So I wasn’t at all prepared. I remember just being confused and nervous. After the show aired I was happy I made it on air because not everyone that appeared that day made it to the show that actually aired on television.
Backlash after my segment aired
I posted a segment of the show on youtube. The comments came in… it was so bad that I had to delete the video. I got comments like I didn’t defend myself, that I had no voice that i wasn’t proud to be “black” that “dominican” is not a race. I was ignorant in all of this because my entire family is mixed. My aunts all range from different skin colors. White, tan and my mom the darkest one. My uncle that passed looked like he could pass for guyanese. I couldn’t understand why people said I hated my skin color when I loved the skin I was in. I had people with no profile pics mostly guys stalk me on my myspace link that was linked to the video and message me about how they saw a pic of me and some light skin guy and added that I should date within my race. My boyfriend at the time now husband is also a descendant of Dominican parents.
Because of all this backlash I deleted the video. It was my time to educated people and I did not get the chance because I knew nothing. I started doing lots of research on the Dominican Republic and on how there came to be so many “mixed races” in the Dominican Republic. When I was younger and you asked me if I was black I’d say no I’m dominican. I learned being dominican is not a “race” A lot of cultures including the dominican republic do not claim their black lineage. 1) because they do not know where it began since they are mixed. 2) because they were never taught about race 3) because if you are dark you are looked upon as less. I do not identify with African American culture per se because i grew up around Dominican culture that contained African, Spanish and Taino indian influences. I did not have “black American” friends growing up because I figured at the time they didn’t get why this black girl is speaking spanish. I felt the hispanic, the jamaican girl, the trini girl and haitian girl did. I was ignorant to it all. I now identify myself first as a woman of color, a black woman, and then a hispanic or latina. I know the difference. But when it comes to me filling out what race/nationality I am on a piece of paper and they want to make you check whether you are Caucasian/European descent , asian, african american, native american, cuban, puerto rican or mexican. Hello, I think I will check other because their are way more nationalities than that and mine isn’t in there.
New York VS. Arizona
Living in NY you have a lot of diversity, some people are able to tell where your’e from by your look, your accent etc. I would relax my hair and it was oh, so flawless when I just finished doing my hair. I had to wait a couple weeks to wash since you can’t mistreat or wash relaxed hair, after all african american hair texture for the most part is naturally dry and with the relaxer you have stripped it of all its moisture. Then I wondered why my hair was breaking. Fast forward to living in Arizona and I had to travel 2 hours to do my hair by a dominican lady, yes, we all know that dominicans do the best roller sets and can blow dry hair. Listen to this? do you see the smoke that’s coming out of that dryer? They are applying heat to straighten your hair and take it out of its natural state. Yes, I’d waste gas,mileage and extra money to relax, roller set my hair, then blow dry, then flat iron to make it straight. I educated myself on my culture, now it was time I educated myself on my hair and how to treat it. I tried to go natural several times, but went back to that creamy crack ( the relaxer) Have you ever seen the movie “Good Hair”? if not, you should see it. Not only is Chris Rock hilarious in it, but its an eye opener its the “Food Inc.” of hair.
Transitioning and Chopping my hair
I transitioned for a while and in 2013 I went to a Deva Chan salon in california and did a semi big chop. Its almost like “the big chop” except that I wasn’t comfortable with a “TWA” a teenie weenie afro so I didn’t cut it that short. I was so tired of trying to blend both natural hair and the relaxed hair.
I encountered a lot of people needed to be educated here and did not know what being “dominican” was in fact I had attorneys I worked for argue with me that spanish wasn’t a language spoken in the dominican republic. They wondered why someone sent him to the “black girl” to translate in spanish when the “mexican girl” was sitting right next to me and could have translated except that “mexican girl” did not speak spanish. I’m so patient that when I experience this type of ignorance I take the time to educate instead of getting upset. I’ve been asked if i have a wig on and if all that hair is mine. In NY i remember being asked by white people if it didn’t hurt when I relaxed my hair. I remember explaining the process and asked myself why do It? then i remembered what they used to tell me at the salon Beauty is pain. I was relaxed when i was five years old. I had never seen my hair it its natural state. I never knew I could achieve curly hair after all i had “bad hair” not “good hair” My mom still tries to use this term when speaking about people’s hair and I always correct her. I start being a smart ass and said things like was her hair dirty? was it mistreated? why do you say bad hair?
Self love and acceptance and more prejudices
With my hair like I have it now its natural state I have gotten more compliments than I ever did when I had it straight/relaxed. I straighten it once or twice a year just to see how long it has grown. I still haven’t straighten it this year. I’m so glad i had to experience everything I did in order to get to know myself. The people you’d think would be the most accepting of your choice of being natural are the people that were the least accepting at least in my case. I
have friends and some family that wondered why I don’t want to just straighten my hair. They would make fun of the “big hair” I, again being a little frustrated had to explain why I chose not to keep damaging my hair. It wasn’t my choice to get it relaxed when I was a little girl anyway. I have so many stories but this is long as it is that I will have to write a separate article for it.
I will speak for myself. I am dominican, dark skin, black. I don’t get offended if you describe be as black. I have different layers because of my culture that includes black. Statistics do show that 80-90 percent of dominicans have african descent. Statistics don’t lie. I hope I educate someone in accepting themselves. I don’t like when a friend or family will be talking about a “black person” whether they are being racist or not I call them out right away and can be very sarcastic. I say things like “so you are white? or am I white? Oh, I didn’t know, this is a first for me.” Then they start back peddling and I like the one where they go “but i mean black black?” again puzzled….Opposed to being???!! We need to promote more self acceptance. In NY I was the light skinned girl. Here in Arizona, i am the you didn’t tell me your wife spoke spanish girl. Yes, I was invited to a get together and i had never met the gentleman and he told my husband that in front of me with everyone that was present at the dinner. Last time i checked it wasn’t a topic of conversation. Him: “You want to come to my get-together ” Husband: “Yeah, but i gotta let you know, my wife speaks spanish”. Again things like this leave me puzzled. For my last prejudice experience in this article, When I had like a year or two in Arizona I was told that I am learning spanish so well. I could choose to let it go and say yeah, I am or just say yeah that’s cause i grew up in a spanish household and explain. I chose the latter. There is a need to explain to the ignorant. Educating them might allow for more people to feel comfortable in their own skin/hair. Anyway, now I have to deal with people thinking my kids are not my kids or getting the second look because they are different complexions which by the way they are both from the same father. I loved being mixed. Thank you Tyra!! 🙂 Enjoy some transitioning photos.
Embracing my natural hair. November 2013.
The day after I chopped my hair. November 2013.
The day of my Semi Big Chop! At the Deva Chan salon in Culver City California. They taught me how to care for my hair even more.
Deva Chan Salon
Me in the Tyra banks show.
I showed up with straight hair. They then curled it with a curling Iron before the show.
Relaxed hair.
Wet relaxed hair no curl pattern.
Transitioning blending both straight and curly. About 5 or 6 months before the cut.
Relaxed hair. After scrunching and adding mouse in gel. Minimal curls. I lost a lot of hair due to color that i thought was just a selofen and later found out it was semi permanent and also due to relaxing.
transitioning straight hair before I cut it off!
Me, Now, Happy to be natural 🙂
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