This Too Shall Pass

These Two Sisters Just Became The Youngest Owners Of A Beauty Supply Store In California

Blavity writes:

A trip to the beauty supply store, for almost all of us, includes one constant in the mix of yaky and kanekalon possibilities; there are rarely, if ever, any black owners behind the counter. Even though black women are one of the biggest consumers in the beauty industry, that number isn’t represented in ownership of beauty supply stores.

English teacher Jeena Lee-Walker said her bosses at the High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry urged her in November 2013 to be more “balanced” in her approach to the racially charged Central Park jogger case that ended with five black and Latino teens being exonerated after spending several years in prison for the attack.

They told her the lessons could create little “riots,” according to court papers.

“I was stunned,” she told the Daily News. “I was kind of like, the facts are the facts. This is what happened. These boys went to jail and lost 14, 18 years of their lives. How can you say that in a more balanced way?”

Although Lee-Walker, 37, agreed to soften her approach, she argued “that students in general, and black students in particular, should be riled up.”

(full story)

Since this is a story about race, I want to make sure everyone is aware that this teacher is not Black.

When I caught the headline earlier today, I assumed it was a Black woman being railroaded by another racist institution for trying to teach the next generation the truth.  When she said black students in particular should be riled up I raised my Black power fist in solidarity…and it’s still raised even though Ms. Lee-Walker is not Black.  I’ll be honest – there are a lot of times when I feel like Asians are over here on one side while Blacks and Latinos are over on the other and they don’t want to be tainted by our struggle because their walk has its own difficulties that don’t always mirror ours.  I love that this Asian woman with her post-grad Harvard degree is telling our Black children that they have the right to be upset about this kind of injustice.

More importantly though, I feel like I’ma have to homeschool my kids.  I just don’t trust the educational system in this country.  From textbooks trying to water down the horrors of slavery to little Black children being thrown out of school and unfairly punished in comparison to their white counterparts to this school saying that these kids would start riots if they knew the truth, I just don’t trust white folks in power trying to teach my Black kids about their history or relationship to this country.  Which is worse: teaching a child in the safety of the classroom about a grave injustice and how we can move forward or not teaching  them and letting them find out later as adults, thereby sewing more seeds of distrust that these institutions run by white people are never forthcoming about their misdeeds?