Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

[Blackstar*]

http://www.zshare.net/video/627262554f524ffa/

http://www.zshare.net/video/62726514b08f0387/

http://www.zshare.net/video/62726318bae95729/

[Blackstar*]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'"><span style="font-size: 14pt">Beauty, the Brush and Black Girl Pain</span></span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">How one troubling YouTube video brought out the screaming little girl in all of us.</span>
By: Teresa Wiltz | Posted: July 27, 2009 at 7:19 AM

When Black Hair, Child Abuse and YouTube Meet

07/27/2009 07:19

At first blush, it looks like a familiar ritual in many black homes: A little girl with abundantly gorgeous, kinky-curly coils sits down with her mother/caregiver for a little grooming. Like most little girls, she’s none too happy to be participating in said ritual. So she lets her displeasure show.

And that’s when a harmless little ritual morphs into YouTube infamy, sparking a furious debate about black parenting styles and the difference between hair care and child abuse: <span style="font-weight: bold">We watch the mother/caregiver as she proceeds to “brush” the girl’s hair, pulling at it with a ferocity, yanking and yelling and <span style="color: #FF0000"><span style="font-size: 11pt">telling the little girl to move her “god**** hand.” “I’m trying to get these f****** naps out of your head so you can look like somebody,” </span></span>she tells her.</span>

It’s hard to listen to the little girl scream. It’s also hard to watch her try to escape, and to watch her mother—if it is indeed her mother—run after her, pinning her down with her thighs, “brushing” her hair with a vengeance, cursing her the whole time. You can see clumps of hair floating about.

The anonymous girl’s big sister—who posted the event on YouTube under the heading, “My Lil Sis,” and “Nappy *** Hair 2,” films it all, laughing so hard that sometimes she can’t film straight: “America’s Funniest Home Videos!” she chortles.

Most of the viewers watching it on YouTube didn’t find it funny. It was flagged for child abuse, taken down from the site and then posted again. And then it went viral, cropping up on sites like <span style="font-weight: bold">Naturallycurly.com, Longhaircareforum.com and Cafemom.com. </span>Some bloggers played detective, tracking down the provenance of the video and reporting it to authorities. (It looks like the video originated in Detroit.) Hell hath no fury like bloggers on a mission to save a child.

The video serves as a Rorschach blot for the female sector of the blogosphere, be they black, white or other: They see the little girl, and they see themselves. There’s cynthiarf, who posted her own reaction video. She saw unrepentant child abuse:

“The stuff that she’s putting into that child’s psyche is gonna be irreversible. I’m d*** near 40 years old, I ain’t forgot ****. …. It’s been a long time since I was 5, and I remember it like it was yesterday. … If you ever see this ****, say something. … I just hope this ***** is in jail.”

Then there are those who watched the video and saw a little girl with a little too much attitude, a little girl who, above all, needed to calm down and submit to the brush. Their mothers brushed their hair with similar force, so what’s the problem? Says beauttty07 who re-posted the video on YouTube after it had been taken down by site administrators:

“its just a trip how the girl is actin all that screamin and stuff and throwing stuff cuz&amp;#65279; she dont want her hair brushed the little girl is actin way over the top and the mother means no harm.”

Let’s just say that I disagree with that assessment: The mother seems to be getting sort of grim pleasure from the girl’s pain. There’s no reassurance: there’s no soothing; there’s no attempt to be gentle. <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">When the little girl, who looks to be about 5, screams, “I want my daddy,” she is told,<span style="font-size: 14pt"> “You ain’t got no f****** daddy.”</span></span></span>

Then, in another video—it comes in three parts—her sister, the videographer tells her, “You’ll be pretty, baby, again.” As if.

The message she’s getting, the message too many little black girls get: Your hair is ugly; therefore you are ugly, too. To be beautiful, to “be somebody,” you need to have your hair smoothed into submission. There’s no room for spirited hair—or spirited little girls.

Some note that the anonymous little girl appears to be of mixed race and that her mother is dark-skinned and appears to be wearing a weave; therefore, the reasoning goes, the mother must be jealous and is exacting her revenge on the little girl’s head. We don’t know these people; we can’t ascribe motives to their actions. Their actions are troubling enough. A whole lot of psychological mess is getting played out in that little 5:46 video.

Hair is such a loaded issue for us; the legacy of 400 years of slavery and brainwashing, good hair vs. bad hair, wannabes vs. the jigaboos, yada, yada, yada. I’m not trying to minimalize the impact, because our wounds go deep. Really deep. I’m just tired of seeing it played out again and again.

Talking about it doesn’t seem to help. Books have been written about our issues with hair; Spike did a movie about it; Oprah’s talked about it; India.Arie <span style="color: #0000ff">sang about it</span>; Chris Rock did a documentary on it; and we still can’t seem to get beyond it. True, in the blogosphere, there’s a whole natural hair revolution going on, with scores of sisters resolving to love the hair they were granted and documenting that love—and obsession—in countless videos, blogs and online organic hair recipes. (Part of the horror generated by the video is the fact that someone in the girl’s environment is savvy enough to upload a video to YouTube but isn’t hip to the fact that brushing kinky or curly hair is a recipe for disaster.)

But even beneath the love for all things “naptural,” we’re still stratifying and categorizing black hair, ascribing numbers to assess the degree of kink and coil, with “4b” being the ultimate in Negritude.

So we talk, and talk, and talk some more. Maybe one day we’ll talk ourselves into a healing place. I’m not so sure. Talking about it is akin to picking at a fresh scab, again and again and again. In the meantime, there’s another generation of little girls, little girls like the girl in the video, who are listening, and taking notes. And running when we reach for the brush.
<span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-size: 8pt">
Teresa Wiltz is The Root’s senior culture writer.</span></span>

Source

[seemiyah]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

I watched it, I didn't thing it was child abuse but I am not sure what the mama was doing to her hair either.

[julie*mango]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">When the little girl, who looks to be about 5, screams, “I want my daddy,” she is told,<span style="font-size: 14pt"> “You ain’t got no f****** daddy.”</span>[/color][/b]</div></div>



All the women
Independent
Throw your hands up at me!

[julie*mango]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

on a serious note she seems too rough with the child...My girls try to wriggle away when I am combing their hair and it does get tangled from time to time and i have to lock my leg around the older one and place the younger one on her tummy across my lap an d hold her there... She seems to enjoy yanking at the girl's hair and that is just wicked!

The little girl has a gorgeous head of thick hair

[twiney]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

that wicked witch with a b was definitely abusing the child... I couldn't watch the entire video ... who ever said you use a brush to get out tangles ... she know how much people would pay to have natural hair like that? ... That's why I dont go to a salon to have them wash my hair unless I am doing a wet twist or I know they have the pic for the blowdryer ... I got up out of one chair when one smaddy tried to used the brush and blowdryer on my hair and it really hurt... now anybody who knows me knows my hair easy to handle so when mi get up out of the chair u know it had to be bad and it wasnt even half as bad as that.

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: seemiyah</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I watched it, I didn't thing it was child abuse but I am not sure what the mama was doing to her hair either. </div></div>I lived by the sea down there in Jamaica for many years. I first rented a half-Salbe' near the beach from a woman who had a shop on the beach for tourists. She had a 3 year old daughter, and a 10 year old son. In the middle of my yard there was a breadfruit tree that had a limb that bent way low and made a cool seat in the shade.

I had only been in my unbelievably wonderful room for a week or ten days, when my landlady sat on the seat with her daughter, and combed her hair into tight little dreads and cornrows. The child cried the whole hour it took. My landlady even smacked her with the brush... (&quot;Stop yer noise!&quot... the sobbing got louder. The third time she started the beauty treatment, and the child started wailing, I stood up in my room and slammed a book down on the table and screamed out, &quot;If I hear her crying again I am MOVING!!&quot;

What do unoo think the fall out was from my freak out?

[FrenchTickla]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

ok, mi had was to stop watch it. she look like sinting tick har off and she a tek it out pon di pickney

all she need fi do is fi separate di hair den tek likkle section and use a wide tooth comb fi comb it out from di ends to di root - likkle at a time.

all dis hackling of di pickney was unecessary

[Suesumba]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

had to go through the sed ting bout mi &quot;pig hair&quot; and di comb lick eena mi head tap. funny i didn't do it to my daughter, but friends say shi haffi be weave queen, soh shi cut awff har hear and weave.

[CeaBee]

Re: Child Abuse and Passing on a Legacy of Self-Hatred

i couldnt watch the whole thing..i just saw a little.

and i don't remember none a that from when me was likkle and mommy used fi comb mi hair....mommy did well genkle.