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This shouldn’t be as large a deal as it's, however Symone Sanders’ new MSNBC present, Symone, is a really large deal—representing excess of the sum of its elements.
Symone isn’t simply one other cable information programming pivot, it’s historic: For the very first time, a bald Black lady has her personal nationwide TV present.
Sanders is not any beginner relating to media visibility. She’s greatest identified from her work with Sen. Bernie Sanders—she was a TV fixture throughout his 2016 presidential marketing campaign—and later as an adviser for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential marketing campaign. In the event you observe politics, you’ve seen (and heard) Symone Sanders.
As a bald Black lady who additionally works in media, and who willingly shaved her head (as Symone did) 11 years in the past, I can’t assist however rejoice this as a significant accomplishment for the host and a major step ahead for the nation. Seeing this kind of illustration of bald Black girls within the media, and on a significant platform, is revolutionary.
In the event you’ve ever watched Sanders you see that she is dynamic, exudes confidence, and embraces her baldness—which is one thing that any bald lady will inform you'll be able to generally be exhausting to do. The patriarchy’s views on how girls ought to be sporting their hair are firmly entrenched in American society, and broadening People’ horizons on the numerous methods girls may be stunning, skilled, and authoritative goes to take a while.
“I am a bald, curvy, Black lady from North Omaha, Nebraska, with a bedazzled nail, and I like a daring lip—and that is what I will proceed to be,” stated Sanders in a latest BET interview.
Black girls’s hair has been politicized, discriminated, and ridiculed for hundreds of years. It’s made us imagine that our pure magnificence is ugly, undesired, and must be modified as a way to slot in culturally. Black girls for years have been subconsciously coerced by pervasive sexism and racism into spending a fortune on haircare merchandise to keep away from “quick nappy hair” or on this case, being bald. And it continues to occur.
When Will Smith struck Chris Rock on reside tv on the Oscars final month, the talk over whether or not violence is ever acceptable and whether or not comedians go “too far” obscured the joke’s goal. Jada Pinkett Smith, a profitable, stunning Black lady, was mocked for being bald—and never that it ought to matter both manner, however her baldness is just not by selection. She has been open about her struggles with alopecia.
Within the office, there was some progress, however not almost sufficient.
The Home of Representatives not too long ago handed the CROWN Act (Making a Respectful and Open World for Pure Hair), a massively essential piece of laws that protects the rights of Black individuals and others to put on their hair nevertheless they select, with out worry of being punished or focused at work. The invoice handed the Home in March, with a vote of 235-189 principally alongside get together strains, nevertheless it has a murky future within the evenly divided Senate.
On the state stage, bans on hair discrimination have solely been handed in a dozen states.
With out the CROWN Act, Black girls will nonetheless have to indicate as much as work not sure if showing as their true selves can be deemed “unprofessional.” That is the case much more for broadcast journalists; Black girls have been tormented for sporting their pure hair on TV—or are sometimes given extra air time and alternatives in the event that they straighten and conform their pure hair texture to white European magnificence requirements.
I, too, have had unlucky conditions in skilled settings with white and male coworkers attempting to rub my bald head. One interviewer had the audacity to ask me if my hair was at all times bald.
Fortunately, Sanders is rewriting the script (actually) and refusing to permit stereotypes of being a bald Black lady preserve her from carrying out her desires. “My hope is that me exhibiting up day-after-day as my genuine self, persevering with to maintain the bar excessive and substantive, not [as] a caricature of what individuals suppose I'm, however really simply being myself—is opening up the door for different younger individuals to step into their respective workplaces, wherever they're, and be comfy with who they're,” stated Sanders to BET. Like Sanders, I've at all times felt empowered, stunning, and on prime of the world as a bald Black lady. However many different bald Black girls might nonetheless use the boldness enhance, to allow them to know that they're really sufficient.
For these of us who're already there, we’ll proceed to showcase how being a bald lady is fierce—and one thing that you must “personal” proudly, whatever the detrimental and dangerous rhetoric that has been put upon us.
States that haven't already handed anti-hair discrimination payments want to acknowledge that they've an obligation to make sure all of the limitations meant to protect white areas within the office, faculty, housing, and extra are knocked down for good. Solely when Black individuals have the liberty to be themselves, and appear to be themselves, will true equality be potential.