Straightening hair has been perceived as a way to be more acceptable to certain relatives, as well as to the white establishment…

In the face of cultural pressure, the thinking goes, conformists relax their hair, and rebels have the courage not to. In some corners, relaxing one's hair is even seen as wishing to be white.

We've covered this issue many times, as has the Times, and the discussion is ongoing. Frankly, the debate does get tiring. Saint Louis writes that many people of color ask: "Why can't hair just be hair? Must an Afro peg a woman as the political heir to Angela Davis? Is a fashionista who replicates the first lady's clean-cut bob really being untrue to herself?"

But a quote from Noliwe M. Rooks, the associate director of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, struck me as as close as we're going to get to an answer. She was asked about what it meant when the hair of Sasha and Malia Obama was sometimes pressed straight, and said: "There's a complexity to who we are now. There wasn't an easy answer to why."

Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics [NY Times]

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Activist and professor Angela Davis was associated with the Black Panthers during the Civil Rights Movement. She was born in Alabama and grew up during a time of rigid segregation. In 1970, after a gun registered in her name was used to kill a judge, she became the third woman ever to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. (She was captured, tried and acquitted.)



Maya Rudolph is an actress and comedian famous for her stint on Saturday Night Live. Her father is a Jewish composer; her mother is the late singer Minnie Ripperton (whose most famous song is "Loving You").



Kara Walker is a fine artist from California with an MFA from RISD. Her work has been in The Renaissance Society in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.



The first and only African-American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting, Suzanne de Passe is a former Motown Records exec who has produced TV shows and films such as Class Act, Sister, Sister, and Showtime at the Apollo.



Bishop T.D. Jakes is an entrepreneur and chief pastor of the The Potter's House, a 30,000 member non-denominational megachurch in Dallas. He's written more than 20 books and led the early morning prayer service for President-elect Barack Obama on inauguration day.


Not seen here, but included in The Black List: Volume 2: Actor Laurence Fishburne; Anglican Bishop Barbara Harris; Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick; physician and academic Valerie Montgomery-Rice, M.D.; filmmaker Tyler Perry; singer Charley Pride; fashion designer Patrick Robinson; musician RZA and filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles. Also, check out our earlier post on The Black List: Volume 1 for videos of Toni Morrison, Thelma Golden and Suzan Lori-Parks.

The Black List: Airing Schedule [HBO]
The Black List: Volume 2 [HBO]
Earlier: HBO's The Black List Offers Intimate Portraits Of Enigmatic Women