The Continued Policing of African American Hair Needs to STOP! #DeAndreArnold

DeAndre Arnold, an 18 year old senior in Texas is the latest victim of blatant racism. He’s been part of the Barbers Hill Independent School District in Mont Belvieu, Texas his entire life, and began growing his locs in the seventh grade. The school superintendent changed the dress code after winter break. Not only did they change the rules, they made it a point to tell DeAndre and his parents that no matter how he pins up his hair, that’s not enough. He must cut his locs off in order to graduate.

School Superintendent Greg Poole gave a statement on twitter:

“we DO have a community supported hair length policy & have had for decades. BH is a State leader with high expectations in ALL areas!” “We will continue to be a child-centered district that seeks to maximize the potential of EVERY child,” he continued. “Local control is sacred to this country, and we will NOT be bullied or intimidated by outside influences.”

Local control. Those are key words. Here’s why: With the old dress code, DeAndre was able to wear his locs as long as they were pulled up and not hanging down his back, in his face or past his earlobes. So he and his mother would put up his hair to make sure he stayed in compliance. He never wore his hair down at school. Now they want him to cut his locs in order to walk across the stage at graduation, and he’s suspended from school until he cut his locs.

I can’t get past the feeling that this rule was directed at DeAndre himself. I can’t help but wonder how many young men had long locs like him and if they all cut theirs to stay in compliance? But because DeAndre refused to cut his locs and instead was very consistent with keeping his locs pinned up to stay in compliance, the school board went to great lengths to change the dress code to force DeAndre to cut his locs? As soon as winter break was over the school principal couldn’t wait to call DeAndre and his parents into his office to give them the ultimatum of cut your locs or you can’t graduate, and you’ll be on suspension until you do so.

Control.

Slavery. Reconstruction. Jim Crow. Evil laws put in place to control an entire race of people. Laws that allowed the inhumane treatment of other human beings. Today we find more instances of this in subtle and not so subtle ways in the workplace, the overcrowding of prisons with the majority of the inmates being African American men and women, and the lack of quality education and adequate facilities in the inner cities throughout America. Everywhere you turn, there are laws and rules put in place that target African Americans – men, women and children. It’s tiring people. It’s so tiring, redundant, and further proof that fear breeds ignorance and unfounded hatred.

We can’t change the color of our skin, the width of our noses, the thickness of our lips, or the curves in our hips. We can’t help how big or round our butts are. And we most certainly can’t change how our hair grows up and out of our scalps. The styles in which we wear our hair are deeply entrenched in our rich culture which all originate from Africa. Yet we are the only race that is constantly being told to change things about ourselves that shouldn’t be changed and quite frankly can’t be changed. We’re being asked to essentially stop being who we are. I don’t know how to be anything but who I am – a black woman from head to toe, inside and out. I love what I see in the mirror. Every child, every man and woman, every human being should love what they see when they look in the mirror. They should love their features, their skin color and their hair instead of constantly being told that they need to look more European.

If we were meant to have straight hair, don’t you think we’d have it? If we were meant to look European we’d be European? I’ll never understand why white people feel like the entire world should look like them so they can feel comfortable. You hate how we look yet you spend millions of dollars trying to look like us. You hate our culture, yet you steal from it at every turn. You even hate our hair, yet every time we turn around you’re trying to get your hair to defy gravity like ours naturally does on it’s own.

I get rules. There needs to be rules and regulations in society otherwise there’d be chaos. But when one culture is constantly being policed out of racism, fear and ignorance, it’s wrong. It’s flat out wrong and racist. What is happening to DeAndre Arnold is wrong and blatantly racist. Why can’t we just live?

As I write about DeAndre Arnold’s situation and how unfair it is, I can’t help but think about the new movie trailer from Jordan Peele called Antebellum. It’s a horror film that tackles the idea of black people today being transported back in time to slavery time. I don’t know how you’re chosen, but if you are chosen, you get transported to a plantation as a slave enduring all the deplorable treatment that they endured. In that same vein, I can’t help but wonder how white people would feel if their entire being was constantly being policed? Their skin color (too pale or not pale enough), hair (too straight or not straight enough), features, everything. How would they feel? If their culture was constantly being mocked yet copied all at the same time? How would they react? I guarantee they wouldn’t like it. Not one bit.

DO NOT CUT YOUR HAIR DeAndre Arnold! Let them mail you your diploma and go on with your life, young man.

Whew Chile, The CON ARTIST Of It All!

I’ve been vlogging about this on YouTube, but I’m going to get into it here as well. I have documented my journey to locs and deciding on sisterlocks for a long time now. I went into this journey excited and trusting my loctician and the sisterlocks way implicitly. Y’all remember how gung-ho I was about following all the rules and listening and following what my consultant told me because – what did I know? I trusted that she’d steer me in the right direction. Well, let’s go back a little bit.

The Initial consultation

Before my initial consultation, I thought I did all the research needed, thorough research on sisterlocks. There isn’t much out there, but I went to their website and read everything they had there and watched the outdated videos. I did my due diligence. When I decided to make an appointment with my consultant, I went prepared with questions, and she answered them all and was very detailed. Most of what she told me I already knew, and she expounded on that information just a smidge bit. One of her selling points to me was how fast she was with installation and reties. Fast? That’s music to my ears! The last thing I wanted was a repeat of my creamy crack days spending an entire Saturday in the shop waiting to get my hair done or getting my hair done. Little did I know that ‘fast’ is a HUGE red flag.

FYI: When you take the sisterlocks retie class and when you take the course to learn how to install sisterlocks so that you can become a trainee and eventually a consultant, you are taught that reties should take three to five hours. And this is dependent on the persons head size, amount of hair (hair density), and hair length. During this time, corrections should be taking place for slippage (when your loc comes down), bunching (when you get big ugly lumps in your locs because slippage wasn’t corrected), or simply cleaning up the grid if it needs it. I just learned this recently. This information is not readily available to those of us with sisterlocks or those considering sisterlocks and that is a huge problem. Anyway, I went with this consultant and she got my locs established and did my reties for a year. She would do my reties in an hour or an hour and a half. I truly thought she was just that fast. Just a whiz. But when I’d tell people how fast she did my reties, they were amazed. Now I know why. Reties shouldn’t be that fast.

Something ain’t right

Over time I felt like something wasn’t right, but let me back up a bit again. At my consultation I let her know that I wasn’t interested in the tiny sisterlocks. I wanted a fuller look, so getting the largest size sisterlocks was what I wanted. That’s what she gave me. I also told her after I started getting reties that I wasn’t interested in having a meticulously well kept grid. I just wanted my hair to look good. Hang on to those last two sentences.

In the beginning I had issues with slippage. She’d point it out to me, and showed me what to look for. It wasn’t until a year into my journey when she gave me the okay not to braid and band that I got bunching that I realized why I had the bunching. Bunching occurs when slippage isn’t fixed. So while she would point out my slippage, she wasn’t correcting it. My consultant of a year was not doing any maintenance on my hair. None. On top of that, my reties never looked good. My locs still looked fuzzy and frizzy. My hair still felt thick at the root in some places. But over time I thought that was normal. It wasn’t. The bunching angered me, and her informing me that I’d have to schedule a separate “maintenance” appointment for her to deal with my slippage and bunching – that was the last straw for me.

She actually wanted me to pay MORE for something that should be included in my retie appointments anyway! My locs and grid never looked nice. They never looked clean. She took my words that I didn’t care about a meticulous grid literally to mean I didn’t want her to do anything to my locs other than retie them. Well heck, I can do my own reties if that’s all you’re gonna do!

I reached out to my sisterlocks community and vented my anger and frustration and many reached out to me offering help, offering to do my reties and to teach me how to do them myself. I was overwhelmed and very touched by the amount of love and support I received. I also reached out to my cousin who is a sisterlocks trainee and told her I wanted her to do my upcoming retie. This is where things got even more interesting.

Whole sections of my head not being retied

Yup, you read that right. I was at my cousin’s house for six hours for my retie this past Sunday, and what she discovered was mind blowing. First, I had anywhere between 1-3 1/2 inches of new growth in various parts of my head. She said the only way that can happen is my consultant was skipping locs during my reties. As she examined my hair and did my retie, she quickly realized it wasn’t just a loc here or there that was missed. It was entire sections. My consultant was so “fast” because she wasn’t retying every single loc on my head. Another nugget I discovered is I actually have 400 locs. My daughters miscounted. I know I have a big head and a lot of hair. I’ve been told this my entire life and it doesn’t bother me because it’s the truth. How this woman claims she was doing my entire head in such a short period time is laughable. She’s a con artist and a fraud.

I didn’t even get the bare minimum of service from her – and I tipped her at every visit! She was not gathering all my loose hairs during my reties. She would be distracted, on business calls, calls with her kids, etc. Oh, and my back was always toward the mirror, so I could never see what she was doing. I could never witness her skipping entire sections of my hair. And she had the nerve to brag about how many transfer clients she had from other people as if she’s so good. But let’s talk about how many of your clients have left you because of your con artist ways? Charging all this money while not providing even the minimum work! Highway robbery.

Your services are no longer needed

Two weeks before I went to my cousin for my retie, I sent my former consultant a text letting her know that I was cancelling my upcoming appointment with her and that going forward I was going to someone else. After my retie with my cousin, I was very tempted to confront my old consultant with what she didn’t do for me. How she flat out stole money from me. But I’m so happy to be in a better place because I have already moved forward and I don’t feel she’s worth the energy.

I’m particularly disappointed that this is a black woman taking advantage of other black women, preying on their ignorance when it comes to sisterlocks. Preying on the fact that the average person who wants sisterlocks barely knows the basics about sisterlocks even after doing their research. This is a huge lesson learned for me, but a serious indictment on sisterlocks the corporation.

The sisterlocks secret society

The secret society that surrounds sisterlocks needs to stop. Their secrets need to be exposed, but few will speak on what is really going on because all who take any sisterlocks courses are required to sign non-disclosure agreement documents. Speaking out after signing those legal documents would result in being sued aggressively immediately. But where does that leave the consumer? It leaves us getting suckered by frauds and those who practice bad business. It leaves us to start support groups on social media and YouTube in search of answers and help. Yet, sisterlocks consultants and brand ambassadors get angry over the misinformation that’s all over the internet and social media. Well guess what? If everything wasn’t so darn secretive and sisterlocks provided more information and guidance for the consumer, maybe you wouldn’t have so much “misinformation” floating around and rogue consultants!

And let’s be real – a lot of the information isn’t bad information. It’s a lot of women telling their sisterlocks journey and giving tips and tricks that may help someone else. The sisterlocks way simply doesn’t work for everyone. We all have different hair needs, scalp issues, etc. Some of us need to use oil. I found this out for myself the hard way.

Sisterlocks is a beautiful form of locs. It’s a great alternative to traditional locs or microlocs. There is a science to the grid, the precise spacing and sizing of each loc. Where sisterlocks fails is not providing the consumer with more knowledge about reties, how long they should be, what is done, what should be looked at and corrected. Instead, sisterlocks is nothing more than a way to make a ton of money if you are a consultant. The consumer is at the mercy of the consultants because there is so much that we don’t know. They can charge whatever they want. Their secrecy is what makes them money, and it’s wrong.

Going forward

I almost made the decision to get rid of my sisterlocks and combine them to have microlocs instead. I’m so glad that talking through my issues and concerns with others in the sisterlocks and loc community changed my mind. I was letting a bad experience with ONE consultant turn me off when that shouldn’t be the case. I needed to drop that bad habit and move on to a better, more positive experience in my journey. And that’s exactly what I did. So far I have not named my consultant in my YouTube videos, but I will continue to expose her shady practices so others out there will know what to look out for.

I am committed to making “beware” videos to protect and prevent others from being scammed. I will keep providing the tools and information needed to navigate finding a consultant, choosing the right one, and what you should know and expect from your installation and your reties. I WISH I had known a year ago what I know now. The only thing I had to rely on was the sisterlocks website that is very sparse and only provides basic information. It will never sit well with me that we as consumers have to depend solely on our loctician/consultant for information that should be readily available to us. It will never sit well with me that consultants and trainees bank on our ignorance and cash in on it hand over fist. It’s not right.

So while my new mission is to educate and do all I can to prevent others from the pitfalls of scam artists and frauds in the sisterlocks community, I will continue to promote sisterlocks as being a great alternative to loose natural hair. I don’t regret locking my hair at all. This past year of hair freedom has been amazing. It’s everything I was looking for and more… except for being scammed of course.

Back To Braiding & Banding + Check Out My YouTube Channel!

Around mid-December my loctician gave me the okay to wash my locs without braiding and banding. So far I’ve washed my hair twice and I’ve noticed some bunching in the back of my head. At first I thought this was just the natural locking process with my locs swelling and shrinking up. By the second wash, I saw that this was not natural at all. It was bunching. And it’s ugly.

What is bunching?

• 

• 

• 

Some of my locs that have bunching

Upon further research, I’ve learned that bunching is caused by uncorrected slippage and excess water on hair that isn’t fully locked. Excess water can include washing your locs too often, sweating in your head, or not braiding and banding when your locs aren’t ready. One YouTuber made a great point: Slippage and bunching isn’t your (the customer’s fault) when it’s the loctician’s responsibility to keep an eye on those things, correct the slippage when they see it, and advise you on what to do to combat it. If you’ve done all that the loctician told you to do and you still have these problems, it is not your fault.

This makes me wonder how much time my loctician is using to correct my problem locs versus rushing to get through my retie. There have been times where I was pressed for time or she was pressed for time, and she was rushing to get my retie done. I’m going to have to talk to her before my next retie appointment and let her know that we need to concentrate on maintenance instead of rushing to get my retie done.

More revelations

Another revelation I’ve had is that I wonder if my loc size was too big hence my hair growing outside of the grid? To be fair, my loctician noticed that my hair grew outside of my grid when she put in my tester locs during my consultation and I came back for my install a month later. I don’t know. I’m thinking out loud and trying to look at all possibilities. To be completely honest, I’m really frustrated at the loose hair that I feel at my roots (the new growth) and I think it’s something I’m going to have to deal with going forward because that’s just how my hair grows. But I also can’t help thinking “what if”…

Fixing the problem

The only solution I’ve come up with on how to fix this problem with bunching is to go back to braiding and banding. As much as I LOVED washing my locs freely, I do not like the look of bunching. Bunching is UGLY and it stands out. I will not ruin my locs just so I don’t have to braid and band.

I’ve also reached out to my fellow locked queens and I’ve received some wonderful advice and offers of help to fix my bunching. I’ve also had friends offer to teach me how to do my own reties. I’m definitely interested in learning how to do my own reties despite my laziness. 😉 I can’t help thinking that we don’t know what will happen today or tomorrow and what our employment or financial situation will be. If the time comes where I can no longer afford paying for my reties, I need to know how to do them myself. My friends advice keeps echoing in my head “Learn how to do your own reties, Sonya. Save your money, and it’ll help you if you’re ever in a bind and can’t afford to pay for them.” She’s so right!

Youtube

I’ve been making videos and posting them to YouTube pretty regularly regarding my sisterlocks journey and all the issues and questions I’ve had along the way. If you want to stay up to date on what’s been going on with me and my sisterlocks, please check out my channel. (<— Click that hyper link) I guess you can say I’ve come to like vlogging after all! 😉 I’ve found that when I have thoughts running through my head, it’s been helpful to just make a video and talk it out and share it with the world. The comments I receive and the advice has been awesome, and it’s helped me put things into perspective. So that’s the game plan, folks! Chime in and let me know how you deal with bunching and if it’s ever been an issue for you. 🙂

2019 Is In The Books! A Year In Review: Sisterlocks Edition

It wasn’t that long ago that I was wishing my sisterlocks would hurry up and mature, that I’d hurry up and reach my one year mark. Well here we are. November 16th I hit my one year of having sisterlocks. This month I was given the okay by my loctician to stop braiding and banding. I’ve experienced a lot of growth and maturing with my locs. So what have I learned in 2019?

What I’ve learned in 2019

First, if you blink, time will pass you by. What I mean by that is while you’re wasting time wishing and hoping for things to hurry up and happen, you can miss them actually happening. I wished for hair growth and didn’t think it was happening when it was. I wished for my hair to mature, and it was already happening. When I washed my hair for the first time without braiding and banding, the change I saw in my locs was instant. They swelled so much that they seemed to shrink. Eventually my locs fell again to show their length, but it was amazing to see.

Patience. Patience is still and will always be key. Having locs requires patience, especially the first two years. Once you hit the adult phase, you have nothing to look forward to but continued growth. I’ve also learned to listen to my own hair and scalp. Before I hit my one year mark, I came to that realization that trying to do things by the sisterlocks book wasn’t working for me. You may come to that conclusion earlier or later in your journey, but don’t be afraid to do what is best for you and your hair.

Always ask questions. When something is bothering you about your hair or if you have questions or concerns, talk to your loctician. If you’re on social media, join some sisterlocks or loc groups and ask questions there as well. The more you know, the better. BUT…be careful of the information or suggestions given in those social media groups. There is a lot of bad info floating around, so be sure to do your research so you can decipher what will or will not work for you.

Don’t be afraid to change locticians. Sometimes you vibe well in the beginning with your loctician, and something changes along the way and you no longer see eye to eye. Always have a backup loctician(s) on deck or a trainee. Anything can happen and you never want to be caught in a bind because you don’t have another person to go to. If you think you can do your own reties, go ahead and learn! There’s nothing wrong with saving your coins by caring for your own hair. I have several friends who have locs or sisterlocks and do their own reties. Some took the class, others simply watched YouTube tutorials and taught themselves. Most did it for financial reasons and because they want to be in charge of their own hair. Whatever your reasons may be, self retying your hair can be done.

Never compare your journey to someone else’s. This is a constant reminder for myself. There’s nothing wrong with learning from or admiring another person’s journey or locs, but please don’t think your journey will or should be like someone else’s. That’s not how it works, and you’ll be very disappointed when your locs don’t look or behave like the next person’s. Remember, no two heads of hair are alike. Hair density, hair type, and many other factors go into how each individual head of hair reacts to having locs. Also, how we care for our hair, how often we wash, retie, etc. will factor into how our locs behave and look. Learn to embrace your journey and love your locs at every stage.

Continue to document your journey through photos. This is so important because you will go through stages of feeling like your locs aren’t progressing or aren’t growing or maturing. Pictures always tell the story. Try to take photos of your locs every month to compare and measure your growth. I guarantee you will see a difference. And when your hair hits that crazy growth stage, it’ll blow your mind and give you hope for the future.

Going forward

Right now I’m almost 14 months sisterlocked and I’ve now washed my hair twice without braiding and banding. With this second wash I’ve noticed what looks like bunching on a lot of my locs. I’m trying my best not to freak out too much about it because I could be wrong. For all I know, this can be part of the locking process. But if it is bunching, all I want to know is can it be corrected? If it can be corrected then I won’t worry about it too much. I see my loctician in a few weeks and she’ll let me know if this change in my locs is normal or if it’s bunching and should go back to braiding and banding.

I love my locs. I’m enjoying this journey, and having my sisterlocks for a full year has been an eyeopening experience. There is much to be said about hair freedom. Locs truly are hair freedom. I wake up every morning not having to do anything to my hair unless I feel like it. My hair routine consists of taking them out of the braids or plaits I’ve had them in overnight, running my fingers through them, spritzing them with a daily moisturizing spritz and go. That’s it. There’s nothing more freeing than that! One year locked and forever to go. Bring on 2020!