Toxic leash

Growing up as a black child in America, at times, comes with a lot of toxic traits that have been passed down through generations. I’m not saying everything that we as black people do is toxic, but some things have traits of toxicity.
One of the things that bothers me the most that we as a community do is when we only support each other success’s when they’re being broadcasted in the media, but we bash or downplay the work the person had to do to gain that success. I will say that the black community is starting to do better with accepting people for who they are or what they look like, but I believe this is because the newer generation is all about being uniquely themselves—from the way they wear their hair, to their personal preference in dating. It’s still a work in progress because, as a black girl, the way you dressed and how your hair was styled growing up, would sometimes be looked at as “grown.” However, in reality, it’s just how we expressed our feelings at that time.
In the hair aspect, it took a while for me to fall in love with my hairstyles, especially with my natural hair because growing up, I had relaxers—it made my hair “more manageable,” or at least that’s what society thought. In the case of our community, especially for females, the media has made it seem like if you don’t have a “30-inch-bust-down-middle-part,” your hair is “undone.” For other black women, society has told them that our hair is “unprofessional” if we decide to walk in with an Afro or wear braids or locs.
Under the Crown Law, a lot of this has changed. This law has made it so that one cannot be discriminated against others for their hair, but this shouldn’t have ever had to happen if only people just minded their business.
Another thing is, specifically for the older generation, if someone is correcting you, most times it is not to be disrespectful—we want to make sure the right information is spoken about. In this generation, we seek to have all of the facts before going out and claiming something as true, but also, as the younger generation, we have to understand that when we get corrected to not take everything to heart. If we’re being honest, this generation is very sensitive in times when they shouldn’t be. We should remember the older generation has gone through similar issues, they just didn’t have social media to broadcast everything.
These things that are considered toxic in the black community were discussed about for many years, yet it’s just now being broadcasted openly. Our community is slowly starting to make change now, but the change has to start with you.