The Black Lives Matter movement

So black women are put in impossile positions with hair. Natural hair is not good or pretty, described as unprofessional and a source of ongoing torment. In order to get “good” hair you either chemical your hair and scalp to death or you do braids or extensions which probably falls in unnatural. And if you do natural corn rows, braids or something of that nature, you fall into the first part.

School’s keep implementing these policies that disproportionately hit young black people and signal them out.

Corn rows and braids that are too tight can lead to traction alopecia. Loss of hair. Ex taught me about that.

Yeah, there is a debate about licensing around those because if done wrong it can do some damage.

When I was growing up, I’d rather go to the dentist than the hair salon. I stopped trying to make my hair look like white hair as an adult. I am 99% sure I did not receive job offers because I keep my hair natural. My sister relaxes hers, but she does it herself.

Some of the schools do limit the natural hair thing because doing extensions or braids with human hair instead of like nylon, it can cost hundreds of dollars and the poor and the wealthy become more… obvious, even in a school with uniforms.

Yeah, I watch the Judge shows during the day, hey I’m old, okay? Anyway it’s pretty obvious who has the cheap extensions and who paid big money. Actually it would be just who paid for the cheaper stuff. Big money you can’t tell. At least this old white guy can’t. I suppose you can tell.

Heh, I wish. There was no way my parents were going to pay 400-800 dollars on hair multiple times a year x2. I had braids once, not expensive ones, and relaxed for years and probably have scalp damage as a result. I also live in area most my teen and adult life where no one does my kind of hair.

I just wanted to clarify for those who don’t know that the schools might be trying to honestly solve a problem but… while it might be a choice for some the others are basically told their entire life that their hair is not good enough so it comes off as a targeted punishment.

I came across a great thread on Twitter the other day that taught me a lot, in case anyone is interested:



Seeing the video I have to agree. I recall when my son was about this age and they were first deciding to have school uniforms. Essentially for good reasons. Stopping bullying about clothing value. And avoiding gang colors. He hated it but went along. OTOH he was a white boy and not a minority. Some poorer kids couldn’t even afford the uniform. Black slacks and white button down shirts for boys. Skirts for girls and white shirts.

They had to figure out how to give poorer families subsidies for clothing without outing them as poor. It was a clusterfuck.

Kids are resourceful too. I heard once that some uniformed based school wound up having trouble with socks, like they managed to signal each other out because the socks weren’t fully regulated or something. I’m a fan of letting kids express themselves when they can but yeah… when violence and targeting involved… course these days they just bully on social media and text instead.

Kids are one thing. But when you focus upon looks instead of hiring really good teachers, you get what you pay for.

IMHO education in the USA needs a sea change. And it won’t happen on the cheap.

Yeah this is a societal problem. I am not sure we can fix it starting with teachers. I don’t care if a teacher has a lazy eye, buck teeth and a limp, if they can excite kids about school and show empathy and connections with all sorts of kids as well as convey information, they should be in. Heck if every kid had a teach like that maybe they would learn early on that different doesn’t really matter.

Minimum wage work-force forced to pay the price for founder’s fuck up.

They changed the headline. Those monsters.

Can’t you just leave?

Becky: * Breathes Racistly *

Lol!

Guilty of being black so of course some one calls the cops on her. Look at the video. She looks truly threatening.

…but, but, but… she had a accomplices! Her eight year old daughter and 71 year old mother.

Gang activity, clearly.

I had a game night this weekend, which means there were cars in front of my house. What this mean is when a couple of teens, oh they looked 13-15 walked by they had opportunity to check out my lil sister’s car. They actually stopped and looked into the car not really realizing we could see and were watching them. They moved on.

Those kids might have been casing for cars. I took a mental note in case something happened but I did not call 911. Sometimes a locked door is enough to keep an honest person honest. And that was way more suspicious than a woman canvasing during a known political season.

Don’t look at cops, but don’t NOT look either

At the risk of inflaming the thread, there is a massive difference between glaring at a person, and having shifty non eye contact.

And it seems ever so slightly disingenous to label it thus:

Don’t look at cops, but don’t NOT look either

Now I’m not saying this justifies police brutality etc, but the way it’s presented in your post @sillhouette strikes me as a bit odd.

about eye contact, well it’s all situational. No hard rules.

If in a confrontational situation, as seems to be what is happening in the first picture, then aggressive eye contact is likely to inflame the situation.

And look at the facial expressions of the 2 involved. Not happy people.

I have no idea what happened in the 2nd photo, so will refrain from comment, but given the apparent pattern of blacks being disproportionately targeted, I’m not inclined to give the cop the benefit of the doubt here, whereas I am in the 1st picture.

The only way I can see the defence in #2 being at all possible is if the defendant is an acknowledged body language expert, like this FBI agent and he can credibly state that there were several factors, lack of eye contact in a context where it would be expected being one, that led him to suspect something was awry.

But if that’s your defence…well even then it is flimsy. There’d usually need to be:

he avoided looking at me, and reached for a knife.

Not:

he didn’t look at me.

tldr: 1st photo = aggression, probably not a good stance to be taking.

2nd photo = flimsy excuse.