Black History Month: Madame CJ Walker
February 16, 2016 at 4:35 am
(This post was last modified: February 16, 2016 at 5:48 am by BrokenQuill92.)
So I have a bone to pick with the legacy of Madame CJ Walker. She's often hailed as a great inventor. One of first black female self-made millionaires. But no one stops to think that her success was built on the roots denigrating black female beauty. The creation of the relaxer (not invented by her but heavily marketed), and mass marketing of the hot comb is not something we as a people should be celebrating. I'm not saying black women and Al Sharpton shouldn't have the choice to straighten our curls but to pretend as if the history of doing isn't rooted in shame and white supremacy is wrong. And celebrating a woman who helped reinforce Eurocentric beauty standards is wrong.
