Based on my experience of teaching in Compton, there’s an exellent chance Dr. Rice had little-girl-twisty-braids of some sort until grade 4/5/6, at which point many parents are likely to admit that their little girl is growing up a bit, and pay for professional braiding or even allow her to straighten it.
As for the Cisco-argument thing, as a kid I didn’t get the relaxing hair thing. I had to ask my black friend in 4th grade if his hair was that way naturally. I think so many black women relaxing their hair helped confuse me.
I am +60% sure that the Washington Post Magazine article Lessons of Might and Right. How Segregation and an Indomitable Family Shaped National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. included a picture of Condi in Birmingham as a kid – I remember because I was surprised how much she looked like the girls who died in the church bombing and the girl in the famous Norman Rockwell painting going to school … if you can recall what I am referring to. If not, what **Cardinal ** said.
The resason I don’t have a link with this is that I can’t get it on washingtonpost.com which is undergoing an “upgrade” at this time, thought it might be up this AM but no luck.
Thanks for heads up. I checked the story. They’ve apparently blown out any add. photos when they archived it. It only has one pic of her in a business suit accompanying the article.
According to that CNN article, “A kindergarten classmate of Rice’s was one of the four little girls killed in the bombing of the city’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.”
Yeah, I may be white, but the town where I grew up and the public schools I attended were as black as they were white, and I had no clue about chemical hair relaxing. I had a vague idea that black girls and women frequently did stuff to their hair that I didn’t do (though my own hair is pretty darn dry and wavy), but no idea about the particulars.
I was really confused when I got a job in high school at a beauty supply store, and black women would come in asking where the perm section was. Why would they want their hair to be curlier? How was that even possible? But apparently “perm” also means “relaxer.”
For a damn fine bit of introspection regarding black hair, the impact and effects of having, and the absolute torture that used to go into changing it, I recommend the early chapters of ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’. There’s a whole section about him straightening his hair to ‘fit in’ before he found Islam.
The caption for that photo does not say that she was a young teenager when the photo was taken. It just says she entered college at 15. For all we know, that could be her graduation photo when she got her master’s.
In that picture she looks innocent and comfortable, like the girls I went to catholic school with. And she looks teenager to me.
Man, what politics can do to a person.
School pix headshots like that are often routinely airbrushed cosmetically to enhance the chances of parents buying picture sets. Maybe her teeth really widened after that, but IMO that would be sort of unlikely
There’s a gap there, it’s just not very noticeable. And I think people’s teeth do spread somewhat as they age. Are your teeth any easier to floss than they were when you were a kid?
You’re correct though about photo shops doctoring prints so the parents will buy.
