Eccentrically Ethnic
I have been following this issue with seven yr. old Destini Berry. The young ballerina who has a problem with her teacher Karen Zissoff regarding her ethnic hairstyle. I guess it's unfair to say the child has a problem. She probably could care less. She just wants to dance like the other girls. Really it's her mother Takeisha Berry.Who in all fairness speaks for her daughter. I have yet to hear what the father has to say, if anything. The mother claims discrimination based on the fact. Destinini isn't being allowed to perform in a Dec. 12th dance recital. She claims had she known about the hair policy. She would have taken her somewhere else. My question is where?Whether we like it or not, braids aren't the mainstream. When many young Black men turn their lives around. The first thing they do, is cut their braids off. In many cases braids are seen as a form of rebellion. Consider the personalities of most people who sport them. We don't see it in Destini but we see it in her mother. Now Black women complain about not being able to wear natural hairstyles. What if they were not given the option of straightening their hair? Which would they choose?
I keep saying braids because the general public is still at that point. Most people don't know the difference between a braid, a dread, and a lock (loc). Braid is like a general description. They're all different you know. Whether they be Asian, Black or White. For someone who is not into natural hairstyles. It simply is braided hair. One of the defenses is , they didn't say you couldn't wear locks. I think that's merely a play on words. When the dress code was written. No one was even wearing what they now call locks. The teacher has instructed many other black girls, without having a problem. Does that mean it's time to challenge it now? Because it's never been challenged before. You can't forge your way into traditions and customs, demanding that they change for you. To be Miss Black America you have to be Black.
Contrary to what many would have you think. This is not a racial issue. It's also not a matter of one persons opinion. It's simply a matter of protocall and tradition. A female Muslim couldn't be a cheerleader. She has to wear too many clothes. In our haste to have our way. We're not looking at the big picture. What happens when the shoe is on the other foot ? The young lady is not being asked to do anything unreasonable. It's not a question of beauty or conformity either. This is not an issue to go to war about. Unfortunately it won't just go away. Even if you do win. Do you really win anything?
I keep saying braids because the general public is still at that point. Most people don't know the difference between a braid, a dread, and a lock (loc). Braid is like a general description. They're all different you know. Whether they be Asian, Black or White. For someone who is not into natural hairstyles. It simply is braided hair. One of the defenses is , they didn't say you couldn't wear locks. I think that's merely a play on words. When the dress code was written. No one was even wearing what they now call locks. The teacher has instructed many other black girls, without having a problem. Does that mean it's time to challenge it now? Because it's never been challenged before. You can't forge your way into traditions and customs, demanding that they change for you. To be Miss Black America you have to be Black.
Contrary to what many would have you think. This is not a racial issue. It's also not a matter of one persons opinion. It's simply a matter of protocall and tradition. A female Muslim couldn't be a cheerleader. She has to wear too many clothes. In our haste to have our way. We're not looking at the big picture. What happens when the shoe is on the other foot ? The young lady is not being asked to do anything unreasonable. It's not a question of beauty or conformity either. This is not an issue to go to war about. Unfortunately it won't just go away. Even if you do win. Do you really win anything?
posted by Common at
12:28 AM
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8 Comments:
Thomas: Whose tradition?
Ballet teacher rejects charge's locked hair
By Wendi C. Thomas
Contact
November 20, 2005
For two months, Destini Berry, 7, has been studying classical ballet. Her first recital would have been Dec. 12.
But because Destini wears her hair in dreadlocks, Dance Works director Karen Zissoff has barred the girl from performing.
Zissoff's dress code requires girls to pull their hair back into a bun for performances. No braids or bangs allowed.
Destini doesn't have braids or bangs; she has locks, as they're commonly called.
Destini's shoulder-length locks are a bit thicker than spaghetti. And, as mom Takeisha Berry, who is a natural hair stylist, showed Zissoff, they can be put into a secure bun.
Zissoff saw the bun and pronounced it unacceptable.
"Classical ballet dancers do not have locks," said Zissoff, who teaches from the rigorous Royal Academy of Dance syllabus.
As you might imagine, Berry is frustrated. Frustrated that Zissoff didn't mention that Destini's hair would be an issue when she first signed up.
Frustrated that Zissoff, who is white, doesn't get the difference between braids, which can be removed, and locks, which cannot, even though she's taught black girls for 18 years.
Berry enrolled Destini in ballet so her daughter could learn about posture and position -- and she has.
But she's also getting her first hard lesson in how authority figures who prefer a European look act when nonconforming black folk arrive.
The tension between ethnic hair styles in traditionally staid environs is not unique to Zissoff's dance studio.
Similar conflicts have sparked a natural black hair movement, which grows stronger every time a workplace or a school tries to ban braids or locks and finds itself on the losing side of a discrimination lawsuit.
Zissoff shrugs off the possibility that she's violated state and federal guidelines that prohibit race-based discrimination by a nonprofit organization, like Dance Works, that receives government funds.
As she sees it, Destini has three options. She can quit the program at Southwest Tennessee Community College. She can cut off her hair and join the recital. Or she can keep her locks and perform alone Dec. 11 for her parents.
Zissoff insists, "This is not an issue of culture, this is an issue of tradition." To back her up, she had Anita Alston, who is black, sit in on our interview.
When I asked Zissoff if she understood what locks are, she pointed to Alston, whose daughter is in Dance Works. "She's the expert on hair."
Alston, who is not a hair stylist, does not teach dance, and who wears her hair chemically straightened as I do, answered several of the questions I posed to Zissoff, who was emotionless during our 45-minute chat. Alston, who is Berry's cousin, agreed with Zissoff -- Destini should conform or leave.
But several other local and national performing arts experts said Zissoff's rigidity has more to do with her personal biases than her professed devotion to the high standards of the art.
"I'm concerned about the imposition of a cultural bias," said Bennie Nelson West of the Memphis Black Arts Alliance. "I don't want to say (Zissoff) shouldn't have her standards, but standards don't mean subjugating who you are."
Said Ronald Alexander, the director of Dance Theatre of Harlem's school: "Whether it's straight or braided or whatever texture, there is a way where the hair can be put into a classical bun."
If the highly respected DTH allows braids and locks, Alexander sees no reason why Zissoff shouldn't.
When it comes to her hair rules, Zissoff, who has said her program encourages "cultural diversity and awareness," is doing a sad solo.
The policy at Ballet Memphis, the Memphis Performing Arts Center, the New Ballet Ensemble, the Memphis Black Arts Alliance and Ballet on Wheels, as well as the renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, is the same: If the girl's hair is secured away from her face, preferably in a bun, the show will go on.
"I'm so amazed that someone would bar a child because of her hair," said Emma Crystal, a dance teacher for the Memphis Performing Arts Center. "I thought that went out with the '60s. ... A big part of performing arts is about self-empowerment, pulling out the best in you, not the best hairdo in you."
Said Dorothy Gunther Pugh of Ballet Memphis: "If their dreads are secured so that they won't hurt their eyes when they spin, then it's fine."
Destini, a first-grader at St. Agnes Academy, says she loves her hair. "It's so beautiful and my mom did it for me."
Still, her mom worries that this incident may have lasting effects. "I've been teaching her to love herself as she is," Berry said, "but she's to the point now where she doesn't want to go (to class) anymore."
Is Zissoff concerned about how this might affect Destini's self-image?
"No," she said flatly. "They're here to conform to all the dance training standards."
Zissoff insisted that allowing Destini to perform with her locks would send a confusing message to her other students, and worse, would be disrespectful to the art form.
But it's not ballet that's being disrespected here, Berry said, and she's absolutely right.
Here we have a professional who works with black children and is almost proud of her willful ignorance about the culture of the students she teaches. That's the biggest dis of all.
Said Destini's mom: "If you're going to deal with African-American girls in our culture, then this is something you'll have to respect, just as you want us to come into your program with respect."
Thomas: Destini will dance; not against rules, for respect
By Wendi C. Thomas
Contact
November 29, 2005
The show goes on, and Destini Berry will be a part.
The 7-year-old girl was banned from her first ballet recital because Dance Works' director, Karen Zissoff, declared her shoulder-length, straw-thin dreadlocks unsuitable for the Dec. 12 performance.
If Destini kept her locks, the only Dance Works recital Zissoff would agree to would be one Dec. 11, in which Destini would dance alone in front of her parents.
But Zissoff has apparently had a change of heart. In a letter given to Destini's mother Monday, Zissoff said the girl will be allowed to perform with her classmates Dec. 12.
This is a win for Destini and despite what some may think, a win for all who are paying attention. Destini's determination to dance led us into frank conversations about race that otherwise we would have avoided.
This was never about Destini's willingness to follow the rules, because she has observed all of Zissoff's written rules.
Zissoff, who receives government money for her non-profit program, has no written policies against locks. Had Takeisha Berry known when Destini began lessons two months ago that Zissoff didn't allow locks, she would have taken her daughter elsewhere.
Zissoff's rules require girls to wear their hair in a bun for recitals. Berry did pull Destini's hair into a bun, but it wasn't good enough for Zissoff.
And that's what has stuck in my craw, this persistent, insidious notion that natural black hair isn't good enough.
Look no further than the proliferation of beauty supply stores hawking long, straight, fake hair for black women to sew onto their scalps, and the boxes of chemical relaxers lining store shelves to see that many black women and men buy into that lie.
We're barely out of the womb before adults start evaluating and grading our hair based on its natural texture. Straight, long hair is "good" hair. Nappy, kinky, coarse, ultra-curly or short hair is "bad" hair.
By styling Destini's hair into locks, Berry was consciously resisting the pressure to make her daughter's hair mimic the European standard of beauty. She was telling her daughter that her hair is fine just as it is.
Complaining that ballet traditions are being destroyed, or insisting this is just another example of nonconforming black people who won't follow the rules is to miss the lesson.
Black and white people are alike, and we are different. Acknowledge the similarities and celebrate the differences. Don't crush them.
To contact Wendi C. Thomas, call (901) 529-5896 or e-mail thomasw@commercialappeal.com.
I think the little girl shouldn't be required to cut her hair. The law is a double edged sword.You get cut depending where you're at.The mother is right by default. The dress code said braids, not locks.
After all this fanfare the little girl changed her mind.She doesn't want to do ballet anymore.I stated from the beginning, it was the mother not the child with the problem.She is the one, who had the issue with the rules anyway.Little Destini just wanted to dance.When interviewed after the recital this evening, the mother looked and sounded like a fool.It became obvious, this argument had no grounds.
It's a shame the child was denied the chance, of being like the other girls.After becoming the center of controversy. It probably wasn't fun anymore.
Notice how Wendi Thomas wears her hair. I'm sure she uses a relaxer. She wears a wrap.
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