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Hair Wars

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Susan Taylor Protests School’s No-Braids Policy

Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., used the phrase “much ado about a hairdo” to describe the brouhaha that ensued after she hit a U.S. Capitol police officer with a cellphone when he did not recognize her with her new hairdo. He barred her entry to the Capitol. McKinney also was not wearing her congressional identification pin.

Now Susan L. Taylor, editorial director of Essence magazine, emphasizes how seriously some black women take the issue of hair.

Taylor, the longstanding face of the nation’s leading magazine for black women, backed out of a speaking engagement at Hampton University, Essence confirmed today, after learning that “braids, dreadlocks and other unusual hairstyles are not acceptable” for majors in a five-year master’s of business administration program at the university.

“I recently withdrew my participation in the 28th Annual Conference on the Black Family at Hampton University,” Taylor told Jawn Murray for his Monday BV Buzz column on AOL Black Voices.

“I began receiving E-mails from numerous sources advising me of disturbing regulations disallowing locks and braided hairstyles for Hampton students. One such e-mail included an Associated Press story headlined: ‘University Bans Certain Hairstyles for Students.’ As a businesswoman and public figure who has proudly worn my hair braided for more than 25 years, I was incredulous and felt insulted. My executive assistant, Debra Parker, contacted the university for clarification, and when she was advised that this was the school’s policy, I easily made the decision to cancel my visit.

“The freedom to wear our hair in ways that celebrate our heritage is one of our ‘rites of passage.’ Students would benefit from learning how to care for and groom locks and braids and wear them in ways that are appropriate in a business setting,” Taylor wrote on March 28.

Taylor said she recommended that Dr. William R. Harvey, the university president, “reconsider this policy and invite informed image consultants to address students in your business program about how to make individual style work in the corporate environment. Perhaps the greatest challenge . . . students will face in the work world is remaining whole and true to themselves in environments that are often hostile to African-Americans. Staying connected to our community and culture is critical. Trying to transform themselves to fit into hardly welcoming environments has scarred countless numbers of Black people,” she said.

In a March 27 story by Ieesha Mckinzie on Black College Wire, Dean Sid Credle of the Hampton School of Business “said he stands by the code and said a more clean-cut look can be an asset to almost any student seeking advancement in the corporate world.”

“There are more people outside the university that are making this a big issue than inside the university,” Credle said.

Meanwhile, the McKinney episode – for which the congresswoman apologized last week – continued to generate comment.

In the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus, a white editorial writer, wrote: “If McKinney looked like Congressman Bob Forehead – tall white man with dark suit and helmet hair – would the officer have been more likely to wave her through – and less likely to forcibly stop her? Would he have been more likely to recognize her in the first place? To suggest that his reaction might well have been different is not to accuse him of bad motives but to recognize the deeply embedded role that race and gender play in perception and judgment.”

In a column today in the Los Angeles Times, Erin Aubry Kaplan, who is African American, told readers, “Be warned: The next episode may be mine. After a few years of short, controlled hair ranging from painted-on to ear length, I’ve let mine grow. It’s now on a serious offensive, approaching Cynthia McKinney territory. I’m feeling belligerent already.”

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Immigration-Rights Suicide – Not National News?

“An eighth grader in California killed himself two weeks ago after being threatened by a school official for participating in the student immigrant rights walkouts,” Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” reported on Tuesday.

“Anthony Soltero, 14, shot himself in the head March 30 with a gun that his stepfather had hidden behind a heavy stereo speaker in the family garage, said attorney Sonia Mercado, who represents the boy’s mother,” according to Sharon McNary’s story Tuesday in the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.

“The eighth-grader had told his mother that a De Anza Middle School administrator threatened him with a fine and jail time as punishment for joining a school walkout two days earlier.”

So far, Soltero’s story has failed to make the national Associated Press wire, and thus is unknown to most American readers and viewers following the huge immigration protests of the past two weeks. But the story has circulated by word of mouth and e-mail, was covered by California news outlets and in national independent and Spanish-language media.

“I’ve heard from Thailand, Tobago, all kinds of places,” said R. Samuel Paz, a civil rights lawyer representing Soltero’s mother, Louise Corales. He told Journal-isms he sent out a few e-mails, which were then forwarded to others. “You couldn’t stop reading it,” said Siu Hin Lee of the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, who received one of them.

Paz “guesstimates” that he got about 200 e-mail replies offering help or condolences.

“This young boy’s sacrifice is the sacrifice of a martyr,” said Moctesuma Esparza, an organizer of East Los Angeles student walkouts in 1968 and a co-producer of “Walkout,” the recent HBO movie based on the events surrounding the political awakening of Mexican-Americans at that time, according to an article Monday by McNary.

“We are planning a national followup looking at a number of the repercussions felt by immigrants who have taken part in the protests,” Mike Silverman, Associated Press managing editor, told Journal-isms today.

The National Lawyers Guild and other local legal organizations established a Web site to assist students, teachers and parents affected by the walkouts in the Los Angeles area.

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Thomas Not Among Ebony’s “Most Influential”

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may be the only African American on the nation’s top court, but he has yet to make Ebony magazine’s list of the “100+ most influential black Americans.”

Included in the May issue are Willie Gary, attorney and founder of the Black Family Network; Earl G. Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise magazine; Catherine L. Hughes, founder and chair of Radio One; Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists; Tavis Smiley, author and broadcast personality; and media mogul Oprah Winfrey.

The criteria state that “being featured on the list does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of any particular individual or ideology. Two criteria guided the experts and editors who made the final recommendations:

Spokeswoman LaTrina Blair, asked about the omission of Thomas, said, “We don’t comment beyond the criteria.”

Meanwhile, Blair confirmed a Feb. 27 story by Jeremy Mullman in Crain’s Chicago Business that said, “Ebony magazine, the flagship title of Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Co., could be forced to rebate millions of dollars to advertisers after falling short of its circulation guarantee during the second half of 2005.”

“According to data released last week by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), Ebony’s average paid monthly circulation was 1.49 million, below the 1.6 million Johnson had promised advertisers.”

Blair explained that the ABC disallowed copies distributed by certain companies, which affected 200,000 Ebony subscriptions as well as other magazine publishers. She said that the 200,000 nonetheless received copies of Ebony. The rebates are being handled on a case-by-case basis, she told Journal-isms.

“The circulation decline threatens to dilute Ebony’s strongest selling point in the competition for ad dollars,” Mullman wrote. “For years it has boasted of being the `No. 1 African-American magazine in the world.’ . . . At its peak, Ebony’s circulation was 1.9 million.

“Especially troubling in the circulation figures: an 8.5% drop in Ebony’s newsstand sales.”

Blair said the publication was exploring “every option that’s out there – everybody’s being creative” in grappling with the decline in authorized circulation.

But she did not seem worried. After all, she said, “We’ve been doing this for 60 years.”

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Twin Cities Proud of Foreign Correspondent

“Fred de Sam Lazaro lives in St. Paul but works as an international PBS correspondent for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. de Sam Lazaro, who has reported from 35 countries for the News Hour and other PBS programs, was in St. Paul to work on a story about immigration,” Peg Meier reported Monday in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

“His job has taken him to 35 countries, from Uzbekistan to Haiti to (no kidding) Timbuktu. He has slept on the desert floor in Chad. While covering hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, he and two teammates took turns sleeping in a car and on its roof. His group reported in rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka and was set upon by a mob when shooting an AIDS segment in South Africa.

“. . . So why is a foreign correspondent of his caliber based in fly-over land, rather than on one of the coasts or abroad? Because he loves the Twin Cities, he says, and can make his job work from here.

“. . . Lehrer said that while de Sam Lazaro is valued for the breadth of his knowledge and interests, ‘his reports from India are particularly special for us because most of the rest of the U.S. journalism world is seldom, if ever, there.'”

A South Asian Journalists Association profile adds that the native of Bangalore, India, “is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars on Asian American issues as well as on journalism. He has won numerous prizes for his reporting and has won SAJA Journalism Awards on multiple occasions.”

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From Writing About Models to Working With Them

Supermodel Tyra Banks “rang up her longtime friend to give him a pep talk,” Patricia Talorico wrote Tuesday in the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal. Roy H. Campbell, former fashion reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, “was about to leave his Wilmington apartment and hop a plane to appear as a guest judge on Banks’ popular UPN TV series, ‘America’s Next Top Model.’ The episode was shot over five days in Los Angeles last November and aired tonight.

“Campbell, who splits his time between Wilmington and a home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has made a big career out of his big personality. As a special events planner with a flair for the dramatic, he has produced over-the-top parties, fashion shows, benefits and receptions for such celebrities as Banks, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Russell Simmons, Star Jones and Samuel L. Jackson,” Talorico continued. Campbell also plans convention events for the National Association of Black Journalists.

“Campbell worked for three years in the early and mid-1980s at The News Journal as a police and general assignment reporter before moving on to the Los Angeles Times. But during his college years, he was bitten by the fashion bug and began hosting and organizing shows.

“In 1987, he returned to the East Coast, where he began working for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Campbell soon made a name for himself as the paper’s fashion editor and critic.

“It was the era of the supermodel, and Campbell got to know them all – Naomi Campbell (no relation), Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and a young Banks, whom he met when she was just 17.”

“. . . Campbell left the Inquirer in 2000 to work as a special events producer. In 2002, he helped plan a designer fashion show and benefit in Philadelphia with Will Smith, Julius ‘Dr J.’ Erving and his then-wife [Turquoise] that honored Oprah Winfrey and her companion Stedman Graham.” Campbell was a faculty member in the Maynard Institute’s 1989 Summer Editing Program.

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