Black Hair Redux

-McKinney, perspiring lightly, talked about having been stopped, touched and disrespected by the officer.

-So it would be reasonable to think that McKinney's hairdo should not have elicited anything more than a shrug or a knowing and sympathetic whisper among black women, "Girrrl, did you see her head?"

-Instead, talk turned ugly on blogs about her news-conference hair. It became the impetus for all sorts of racially driven insults about her locks and their natural texture. A black woman's hair is an easy, timeworn source of racist mockery. It has become an exhausting cliche of self-loathing whether it is kinky, hot-combed, braided, locked or chemically relaxed. (Indeed, plenty of black folks see all kinds of dire race-traitor undertones in Condoleezza Rice's smooth, controlled cap of hair.) A black woman's hair is a bottomless source of inspiration for essays, books and documentaries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040602341.html