For Colored Girls Who Considered Quitting After Hearing Enuf Office Comments About Her Hair

I’m sensing Republicans will soon be asking Malia Obama to resign her post as First Daughter as the role of First Daughter is unconstitutional. If they succeed Team Obama will be loosing one of its most effective members. To most people, the contribution of Malia is missable. To black women who have been put under administrative scrutiny at work for wearing anything other than the Donna Brazile/Condoleezza Rice/Michelle Obama office perm, Malia Obama is a trailblazer.

As any black woman over the age of thirty-five will tell you it has not been easy making a black woman’s hair acceptable in the workplace (“yes that is a ceramic bird in my hair”). Nappy hair on a black woman has been considered, on the surface, below office muster. Braids, twists, and Afros above a certain height can be grounds for a workplace hassling. Once the wearer chooses to attend her job in one of these styles her superiors no longer see her Cheryl in accounting; She is Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, the Crips, and the bloods in accounting. She will be assumed to be testy, mean, and lippy. She will swivel her head when she explains why she can't help you. She will be unapproachable and highly likely to file multiple frivolous discrimination suits. In a word, trouble.

While things are much better than they were in the 80s and 90s we can easily see where the struggle continues. Before Malia, there was no Sister on the White House staff or any White House resident who would rock braids. To this day Malia is the only one. It may be assumed that this is something Malia can get away with as a the minor child of a president, but even at eleven years of age Miss Obama has already been the target of the Right-Wing outrage generator. While touring Italy this year Malia sported a t-shirt emblazoned with a peace sign which prompted some tractionless chatter about it sending the wrong message to the attendees of the G8 Summit which was occurring simultaneously.

I don’t know about the shirt, but her hair certainly sent a message that day as she strolled through the streets of Rome: “My hair is nappy. Live with it.” It would be too dramatic to compare this to when Eleanor Roosevelt flew with the Tuskegee Airmen to validate their airmanship, but Malia is opening a door. We are approaching the day when a black woman can get a hairdo over the weekend without having to anticipate it creating any bureaucratic stress on Monday morning.

Malia is the quintessential spokesperson who never had to say a word. With only eleven years behind her, there's little record for her enemies to pillage. She is certainly more liked than her father. They don't poll the approval of presidential children, but if they did, Barack Obama would be wearing cornrows at his next Camp David visit. Then in fifty years it would be trivia that Barack Obama began the tradition of presidents wearing cornrows during their Camp David stays.