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Books by Peggy Brooks-Bertram
Uncrowned Queens: African
American Community Builders / Wonderful Ethiopians of
the Cushite Empire (Book II) /
Go,
Tell Michelle
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Nappy Headed Women
A Response to
Don Imus' Verbal
Attack
on Rutgers Black Female Athletes
By Peggy
Brooks-Bertram
I learned about
being "nappy headed" when I was born. I still have
nappy hair. I have never worn extensions, never dyed my
hair and never had a perm. I am a nappy headed woman to
the grave. This is further endorsed by the fact that I
lost most of my hair in my teens from genetics and have
worn beautiful headwraps and wigs most of my adult
life. I wear lovely wigs that I structure/reconstruct
to suit my face.
A few years ago I
shaved my head and went completely bald for about 5
years. That drove most people crazy, especially black
women in the church. Then I started wearing wigs again
because my head got cold in air conditioning. And the
saga goes on. But the gist of the "nappy" headed
concept is that its roots are in the enslavement of
black people and the subsequent enslavement of their
psyche about their natural essence: permanent "naps."
Whites had to enslave our people entirely, and so
thoroughly that they had to attack the very roots as
they left the scalp.
Black women spend a
lifetime trying to "control" and "straighten" the naps.
If they were not "blessed" with "good hair," they had
to get as close to the "good stuff" as possible.
Beginning in childhood, they faced the sometimes "red
hot" comb; scabbed up ears; hot combs falling down their
backs and later potential cancer causing chemicals all
in the name of "busting the naps." Today, young black
girls learn that to be socially acceptable, first among
other black people, you must "bust the naps." You do
that today by starting early to poison oneself with
"permanents" that again attack the psyche at the "root"
trying to tame that African heritage at the source: "the
root."
Finally, after
years of "keeping the hair from going back--to the root"
Black women walk around with a muddy colored dead
protein that is lifeless, brittle, and downright ugly.
And, all in the name of having the "good stuff." This
is what white America requires if you are going to hang
out with them. Hollywood sets the example. Black women
in the arts with waist length, blond hair glued to the
head. Where? At the root! There is no end to this
madness. Black women, in the main,—not
everyone is so crazy—have
been driven crazy. They are also driving their young
children crazy about taming the "naps."
Black girls do not
want to go swimming in school because their hair will
"go back" Where? To the root. You have to destroy the
root if you want to be accepted. Ironically, it
appeared that all of the black women on the basketball
team, were pretty skilled in "busting their naps." I
did not see any real "naps" anywhere. They had all been
busted even before the press conference where they all
had their naps under "social control." So what about
Don Imus? He did not know what the heck he was stepping
into—not
to mention he is racist and is paid well to be so.
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Peggy Brooks-Bertram is a
playwright, poet, and dramatist. Her creative writing includes
five children’s books entitled, African On My Stairs.
Illustrations from this series hang in the Rev. Bennett W. Smith
Family Life Center at St. John Baptist Church. In 1988, her
play, Dynasties of Kush, was selected to be included in
the University at Buffalo, First International Women's
Playwright Conference. It was enacted at the Langston
Hughes Institute.
Brooks-Bertram Bio
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Editorial Response
I'm still plowing
through Theodore White's Introduction to the
Invention of the White Race. After disposing of
the
psycho-cultural thesis
of Winthrop D. Jordan's in
White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro,
1550-1812 (1968) and Carl N. Degler's in
Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in
Brazil and the United States (1971) that essentially whites
are naturally racist, he takes up the socio-economic
proponents. He considers Lerone Bennett
solid with regard
to the source and the use of "race" and "racism" in
America.
Of Bennett's theses, White
writes:
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Of all the historians of the 'social'
side of the question, only the
African-American historian Lerone Bennett
Jr. succeeds in placing the argument on the
three essential bearing points from which
it cannot be toppled. First, that racial
slavery constituted a ruling-class response
to a problem of labor solidarity. Second,
that a system of racial privileges for the
propertyless 'whites' was deliberately
instituted in order to align them on the
side of the plantation bourgeoise against
the African-American bond-laborers. Third,
that the consequence was not only ruinous to
the interests of the African Americans, but
was 'disastrous' for the propertyless
'whites' as well (21). |
So my point
again our thrust should not be merely against stooges
like Don Imus, but rather against those corporate interests
(21st century plantation owners) who make use of such
"newsmen" and "commentators" as Imus and Bret Hume and
that ilk to keep us stirred up against one another,
comfortable blacks against poor blacks, women against
all men, and middle-class and poor whites against us
all. We must do our best, all of us, to uncover the
scheme of the social control game that is played against
all of us. While the wealthy escape with the loot, we
all suffer, civility goes down the tube, work and
prosperity and
solidarity evaporate.
Of course, we
as blacks have special work to do. For it is we who must
carry the horse of racism on our backs, primarily,
however runious the social control race game is to our
fellow Americans. In this regard, Dr. Bertram's comments
are a positive statement on this entire affair. I
encourage you to pass it along. Note too in her piece
that her emphasis is on the social control uses of
anti-black racism, that is, of keeping Negroes in their
place and keeping the laboring classes at each others
throats.
I also
encourage people to check out what she is doing with her
website Uncrowned Queens http://wings.buffalo.edu/uncrownedqueens.
Check out to the files we have here on ChickenBones—Peggy
Brooks-Bertram Barbara Ann
Seals Nevergold Uncrowned Queens Project
Uncrowned
Queens: African American Women
(The Book)
—Rudy
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 10 April 2007
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