Shanisha Branch

“I didn’t know black people’s hair wasn’t naturally straight,” my ever curious pale-skinned friend said to me. It was spring of 2015 in a quiet Marseille airport terminal too early for anyone’s eyes to open. My friend and I, whom I met two months prior, talked about family, friends and school back home in the States. We were both college students studying French abroad in the south of France. It had the makings of a beautiful day: crisp air from the mountainous region west of Marseille, shortened lines at the baggage claim and security wore smiles as well as fellow travelers who went out of their way to greet us. It must be something about being in the south of France where things are much slower and gentler, that almost all the natives had immense hospitality. The conversation between us birthed from too much free time for we had over planned, expecting a long wait. Before boarding our flight to Belgium she told me about a conversation she had with one of her friends at home. She said she used to live in the suburbs of Chicago where there wasn’t much diversity. Neither was there much at her junior high school however; she did befriend a young black girl. As she recalled one of her friends told her black girls relax their hair to make it straight. My naïve friend was used to seeing her black girlfriend’s hair bone straight, not kinky and knotted as it naturally grows. And because of her bemusement she decided to call up her black girlfriend and find out for herself. To her surprise, her girlfriend confirmed that, “yes, black people’s hair is not naturally straight.” Upon hearing this story, I was completely overcome with amusement and really couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I realize now it probably made her uncomfortable however, to me, it just seemed silly to believe that, especially with the work I have to do just to comb through my hair on a regular basis. The extreme sport called wash day literally takes me three days so for her to think that black girls’ hair was naturally straight really tickled me. Being a natural girl myself, I got a lot of questions from the group of girls I befriended overseas. Questions about my culture, slang and, of course, hair were usually led most of our conversations. Not to mention, my group of friends were all white. They each came from a different background and each had different experiences with African Americans. One thing that was consistent however, is they were all very curious about me. And it didn’t make me angry or hurt my feelings. Honestly, I thought I’d be offended by anyone of European decent talking about my nappy and knotted kinks, slang, music, or my people. I privately appreciated their genuine interest in me and I made it comfortable for them to ask me about whatever. Though, it was a little weird being considered a science project. They picked and probed at my thoughts and simple practices of everyday life completely fascinated about things I do and say. Once while in Normandy, news of a famous singer who rocked some faux locks reached our social media feeds. My travel companions were determining if the singer had really locked up or if the hairstyle was indeed fake. So they resolved to ask me about it. All of it was news to me because I hadn’t heard about the singer, who is of both European and African descent, changing up her hair style so they had to show me the picture first. I immediately knew the hair was fake which I shared with them. One of my friends asked, “what’s it called, again?” “Faux locks,” I repeated myself. This style is imitation dread locks created by artificial hair braided then wrapped around a women’s original hair. On the same day we were looking at old pictures on our Facebook pages. We decided to visit the D-day beaches in Normandy and rented an AirBnb from a quint little town South of there. One of the girls began talking about how much she missed the States and her family. Simultaneously, we all started sharing the photo album of our lives we each other via Facebook. In one photo from a birthday party I attended, my hair was styled in box braids, a style formed by braiding artificial hair into a women’s natural hair using small pieces from root to tip similar to plaits except smaller, woven side by side. The same friend asked if those were faux locks too. It had been so long since I had them that I just said, “oh, those are just called braids.” Honestly, I couldn’t remember what they were called at that very moment and I knew none of them could prove if I was fibbing or not. I add the power to form their ideas about black girls and their hair. Whatever I said to them became their truth. While studying abroad I shared a room, a practice a hadn’t done since my freshmen year in college and never perfected, with a white girl from Texas. She was opinionated and an observer at heart. She had the height of an amazon woman and the smarts of a web site developer. She was studying Internet Technology at the University of Texas and was loads of fun. She always intently but quietly watched me two strand twist my natural hair at night before going to bed while listening to hip hop music on my tablet. At that time, my hair was freshly cut four months ago and the length was a struggle. I had hopes of finding beauty supply stores who sold natural hair care products in Aix but I was sadly mistaken. In the event I couldn’t find natural hair products I packed my suitcase with 80% hair products and 20% clothing along with everything else and for good reason. One morning on our way to school in the city. While stuffed in a barely working elevator, my roommate asked “Do you have to twist your hair every night”. She asked me this partly because I was looking through the transparent metal interior of the elevator, desperately trying to push my unruly coils into submission to form a style I could at least be ok with and partly because she was curious. Maybe she wanted to ask me this for a long time. I said “oh, no just because its still growing I have to play with it more.” I felt myself tumbling into a long story about hair and my journey to natural but I stopped for fear of my elevator companion not being interested in the details. On a train from Nice to Aix-en-Provence, another one of my friends asked me if I, “feel intimated walking down the street alone.” There had been some stories going around at the school of other girls who fell prey to crazy drunk Frenchman harassing them. One of our friends in the group had someone stalk her while walking home from class. So our nerves were definitely set off. This particular friend felt afraid while walking the street early in the morning before the sun or city awoke. We had to catch a train early that morning to make it to our destination. She told us there were two guys on the other side of the street where she was walking. They seemed harmless at first but then they starting shouting gibberish at her in their native tongue. She got so scared she decided to run to the train station. I found it not surprising that she asked me that question because I was sure race had something to do with. After much thought and being careful with the words I chose, I replied with, “I think most people in any culture think that black people are inherently mean which is why I think I don’t get bothered as much. And I walk down the street unafraid not worrying what someone might do to me. So I think it’s about the way you carry yourself too.” I don’t know if she understood fully so I explained further that she might seem helpless because of the color of her skin, that there is a stigma (white women are dainty) attached her because of it, no matter if she is or not. In my case I might seem tough because my skin is a few hues darker than hers. That was the most delicate and truthful answer I could give in the moment. I thought long before I answered her question because I didn’t know how she would take it but I figured if she felt comfortable enough to ask me then she should feel comfortable with the answer. Most of my friends back in the states at that time were like me: same hair styles, ethnicity, speech. We liked the same music, considered the same things to be fun, had similar world views. I thought I had learned the lesson of understanding people’s point of view in elementary school however that proved to be false. Those conversations taught me that although we may have all been from the same country we each lived separate lives. Our lives never bumped into each other because we didn’t want them to. We had friends who looked like us, dressed like us, talked like us and liked the same things we did. However, while I was abroad not too many of my friends shared those qualities. Though I may not have befriended them in the States because we didn’t share anything in common, so I thought, I did find out that we can still be friends and are to this day. They taught me a lot about their family background and heritage that I hadn’t cared to know before. And I taught them a thing or two about being African American in America.