I found some ads from the 1960′s that tried to influence black men to go natural.

It’s rare for me to see black men with relaxers in my area. I usually only see black male celebrities and pimps (lol) rocking it. At first, I never really thought about black men going natural in this day in age.

For the black men that I have seen with relaxed hair, I have yet to see them go natural, so it was normal for me to think that if they relaxed, they were in it for the long run. I also assumed that if for some reason they decided to get rid of the relaxer, that they could shave their hair off without transitioning because natural hair that’s low cut is often seen as a masculine attribute, so men would most likely not be ridiculed for it. (I also failed to realize that there’s plenty of men who like to wear their hair long.  Oh, and I forgot about the texturizers too!)

That changed when I learned that a fellow forum poster was a man transitioning his hair from relaxed to natural.

According to these ads, having natural hair makes you more “black.” Do you agree? And does having natural hair show that you’re proud of your “blackness?”

Then there’s that double standard. Like when people mistook Michael Jackson’s skin disease as him using skin bleach, they were saying that it made him less black. Yet, relaxers aren’t enough to be considered that.

I don’t feel that going natural makes you more “black.” It just makes you more, “you.” No amount of relaxers, skin bleach, or plastic surgery can make a person less black in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, it can definitely make you look like someone you’re not, but for me, it’s all about the genetic build-up.

Ans although there’s naturals who aren’t proud to be black, there’s other naturals who express their pride of being black through wearing their hair natural.

What do you think?