Re: Cases related to African American hair practices

[mlewis@xxxxxxxxxx]

Dr. Fontes:
An excellent point. There are several wonderful books available to parents 
about healthy ways to groom their child's hair. There is one book written by a 
White foster mother of her experiences learning to groom her African American's 
child's hair. In the research I have done with African American women over the 
past 14 years I have posed the question empirically, what is "good" and "bad" 
hair? "What is the age a girl should do her own hair?" and "What is the 
earliest age a child should [get a perm; get hair cut]?] 
    I wanted to find out the cultural norms from the perspective and in the 
voice of the cultural group members. As Jill Korbin has noted, in order to 
establish a practice as constituting abuse or maltreatment we must know the 
cultural standards for that specific cultural group.
    Over the years when we have presented topics related to hair care and Black 
children, we were asked, "What constitutes child endangering hair care 
practices?" We didn't have a definitive answer. We were aware of one case in 
this area where a Judge ruled that a non-custodial mother could not administer 
a perm to her 36-month-old daughter when she had her for week-end visitations.  
The child had been removed from the mother's care for other reasons. The foster 
mother had complained to the case worker that the birth mother had repeatedly 
put perms in the child's hair during visits. This is the type of case where the 
Judge, caseworker and lawyer could have used the education about the meaning of 
hair, and normative practices related to hair styling in African American 
commuinities in order to make a decision that was in the best interests of the 
child, respected the beliefs and practices of her mother and addressed the 
concerns of the foster mother.
    As I noted in my first email, we want to begin to establish cultural, 
psychological and legal guidelines for professionals confronted with decisions 
about placement and removal of children.  

Marva Lewis
Quoting lfontes@rcn.com:

> Greetings all! 
> I am uncomfortable with the tenor of this discussion, which 
> seems to imply that we need to find yet another way 
> to "catch" and blame African  Americans--this time for 
> grooming practices that might be harmful. Why not EDUCATe 
> African Americans AND OTHER PARENTS about grooming practices 
> that might be harmful, instead?
> 
> 
> Lisa Fontes, Ph.D.
>