Even hair weaves call for honesty

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Updated: January 30, 2012 8:14AM

A-weave-e-derci!

It’s been an unbeweavable year. This despite the heat I took this summer for having the audacity as a man — no less a bald black man — to dare speak my mind about the explosion of hair weaves of assorted varieties worn by black women at the expense of their natural-born hair.

I did, in fact, survive the so-called “sisters-with-weave-assassination squad” and also the threat of one sister to come to my office and slap my face.

Sheesh.

There was the sister who offered to serve as future sounding board — as a kind of expert on women’s issues — and who recommended that should I write about this matter ever again, I check with her first.

O-Kaaaaay.

There was the sister who scolded: “You have an important forum. Use it to uplift & inspire. Not just to publicly denigrate.”

Ouch.

Another sister, who forsook perm for natural hair, thanked me for essentially chronicling her “road to mental emancipation.” Some sisters wrote to justify their weaves. Others said they had my back. Brothers wrote to commend me for my courage and to warn that I had climbed out on a fragile limb all by myself.

“I guess you ducked and dodged that red dot on your forehead,” one brother wrote jokingly. “I thought they were torturing you with a head full of hair relaxer and no water.”

Thanks a lot, bruh, (lol).

Through it all, clear to me was that I was unprepared for the wrath of weave-a-holics, or for speaking about the epidemic of aesthetic or dead-human hair currently gripping our nation in the name of weave-a-licious beauty. And yet I’d do it all again, wouldn’t change a single word.

I’d do so even amid the sentiment that black women can’t seem to catch a break nowadays, having been criticized for everything from their weight to wearing hairweave. This amid the emergence of television shows like “Basketball Wives” and “Love & Hip Hop,” which, in my estimation, and in the eyes of many sisters, inflict insidious harm to the image of black women in general.

I’d do so, motivated as part-commentator, part-journalist and writer, as one having accepted the charge of surveying the social landscape in these times and offering — even if controversial — my honest thoughts and reflections.

I do so always with an eye for fact and detail in reporting, where called for, and ultimately iced with the earnest beliefs of my heart, mind, soul — whether people like it or not.

As a columnist, that is always my approach — whether writing about politics, education, death, life, heartache or hairweave. It is my pact with myself and, more importantly, with the reader.

Two years ago, when a Sun-Times editor asked me to consider writing a weekly column, I was, quite frankly, reluctant.

“I’m not sure people want to hear what I have to say,” I said to myself. “And I sure as hell know some of them won’t like it.”

It also bothered me that on news websites, some people take anonymous drive-by shots at columnists and spew vitriol. I also took note of the absence of any other local black male columnists and thought: “Dude, do you really want to stick your neck out there? Really?”

I have. And it has been fun and rewarding in ways beyond measure — none greater than the letters, e-mails or remarks in passing from perfect strangers — even if they don’t agree — expressing appreciation that I at least said it.

So for as long as it lasts, I intend to keep saying it, even if I feel compelled for the moment to chill on any more talk about hairweave. Until next year: Aweave-e-derci. Peace out.