I remember waking up one morning when I was little and running straight to the kitchen in my house to find my mom. I had tears in my eyes as I told her, “Mom, I wish I was white.” She looked at me with great confusion. “Why would you want to be white, Sharmond?” I looked down and said, “Because everyone thinks being black is ugly, and I don’t want to be ugly. Dark skin is ugly”. She looked at me with such sadness after I said that, as if I had told her that the love she has shown me over the years didn’t amount to what society thinks of me. She responded with, “Well ,Sharmond, I love dark-skinned men, just like your father. Dark-skinned men are beautiful and they have the skin of chocolate. You are beautiful, not just because of your skin and your hair, which are both so unique, but also because you were made in the image of God. That is what makes you beautiful.” From a little boy to now, I can say that the words my mom gave me that day stuck with me forever and became one of the ultimate reasons why I decided to grow my hair. I wanted to show the world that I am not ashamed of my complexion and go against the idea that blacks should either perm their hair or have short hair because our hair is "nappy" or "unkempt". I feel that our hair is beautiful and just like any other races, we should be allowed to grow our hair without any backlash or unnecessary opinions on what someone feels is “good hair”.

If you grew up in a black home, you always heard, “You have some nappy hair”. Or if you were fortunate

enough, you would hear, “You got some good hair.” Whenever someone heard that they had “nappy hair” it was always correlated with “bad hair” in the black community. My hair has always been short. It is just something that I was just accustomed to. When I first start growing my hair during my senior year of high school, I was always approached with, “When are you getting a a hair cut?" or “Are you okay?" These comments made me question why my hair wasn’t good enough to let grow. So instead of listening to people, I continued to let it grow because I understood the beauty within my hair. I was also happy to finally have something other than short hair.

As a black man, I feel like we should stop telling our black peers that their hair is "nappy". The word is derogatory and has a negative connotation that keeps the black community wanting to be something else beside black. Black people have very thick hair and that is what it should be called, "thick" not "nappy". We should be proud of the thickness of our hair. Women spend thousands of dollars on perms that can potentially cause brain damage, because all of them want straight hair- an ideal that was forced upon us because of the western culture we were forced into. So instead of telling your friend who is growing out their hair or deciding to give up perms that their hair is "nappy", tell them that they have beautiful hair that is thick and amazing.