Friends, troubled times are here; troubled times have come our way, but rest easy my fellow Americans, your U.S. House of Representatives is working overtime to make and save your day!
As I write my daily prose, press releases have been arriving fast and furious all across social media and mainstream press outlets heralding landmark legislation which will bring America back from the tenuous precipice upon our collective way of life, teeters.
This vitally important legislative breakthrough is targeted to cure one of the greatest ills plaguing America today. So what has the House cooked up?
Is it legislation incentivizing increased oil production to bring us back to energy independence? Opening the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline or addressing historic inflation? No, it’s not.
Is it a major crime prevention bill to deal with skyrocketing murder rates, primarily of black men in inner cities? Is a proposed law to prevent another estimated 2 million illegal border crossings in 2022? No; not those.
How about a bill authorizing increased defense spending in light of Russian aggression or a bill which prohibits post-puberty biological males from competing against women in sports? Or investigating whether it is still in the United States’ best interest to have Russia involved in the Iranian nuclear deal? Nope, it’s none of the above.
How about legislation empowering a bipartisan committee (such as the Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2020 “insurrection”) to investigate Hunter Biden and whether Joe Biden benefitted from the millions of dollars transferred to his son via Ukraine, Russia and China, now that the media and FBI has flipped and apparently authenticated the “laptop from hell” (and the emails contained therein as being legit); the very laptop which candidate Biden and liberal press claimed was “Russian disinformation” prior to the 2020 election?
No, sadly, the House didn’t go there either. No, the grandiose legislative bill which is meant to ease your accompanying anxiety and pain in the face of historical challenges to our way of life concerns… hairstyles.
Yes, your House of Representatives recently passed the “CROWN Act” which provides: “No individual in the United States shall be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under, any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, based on the individual’s hair texture or hairstyle, if that hair texture or that hairstyle is commonly associated with a particular race or national origin (including hair which is tightly coiled or tightly curled, locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, and Afros)”. There you have it: “The CROWN Act”.
Do you feel better now about the direction our country is heading or are you still one of the 72 percent who feel we are heading down the wrong road? Is your confidence in America restored? Number me among the 72 percent despite the CROWN Act. I am simply not woke enough to be down with CROWN.
So what’s CROWN all about? Can everyone just let it all hang out? No, it appears not; only those hairstyles and textures commonly associated with a particular race or place of national origin. Now, what’s that suppose to mean? I believe it means that if your son has straight long hair down the middle of his back, can the wrestling coach make him cut his hair in order to compete in wrestling? It appears so because straight long hair is not commonly associated with any particular race, but if his wrestling teammate sports equally long hair but in the style of dreadlocks, twists or braids which is commonly associated with his particular race, the CROWN act prevents the coach from making that wrestler cut his hair. Thus, not all hair is treated equally under the law, some hair and hairstyles are more equal than others. I thought CROWN was enacted to prevent the evils of hair discrimination?
Can you not picture it — Joe Biden standing stoically like the Statue of Liberty during a world-wide public service announcement running on all major news outlets, reading from the teleprompter: “Give me your tired and unruly tresses, longing to be tamed; bring to our shores, hair natural to the core to be free from public shame; come to me those that seek to be free from bigoted bias against how your hair is worn, come to me, all who seek to preserve hair not shorn to be saved from public scorn!”
It’s not a joke, as CROWN proposes a criminal felony subject to jail time for those who dare discriminate against an individual’s hair texture or style.
CROWN is just another example of legislative overkill. If some person, company, business, educational institution and/or political entity is so shallow as to deny you a job, an education or an opportunity because of your hair, that same feckless decision maker is likely a bigot too. So is this how it goes: an employer may be willing to ignore the fact that you, the job applicant, is of a different race and hire you, but then draws the line over your hair style which you claim is a characteristic of your race and/or place of origin? So for that prospective employer, hair is the defining reason not to hire you but your race had nothing to do with it?
The United States, and rightfully so, already has numerous laws preventing discrimination on the grounds of racial identity. CROWN is just another example of Congress trying to deal with low hanging fruit so they can pound their chests and say, “See, I got something done.” Is it any wonder that Congress’ approval rating, according to Statista, is 18 percent among the American people? This sort of irresponsible legislation is often abused by the feigned aggrieved and their lawyers who will litigate this issue over and over in the years to come. I can see it now: “My client, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was denied a promotion because of his cornrows; all other members of the management team have straight, finely textured hair, including one strikingly bad comb over, proving that my client’s hair is not accepted or welcomed as part of the management team!” The CROWN Act opens that door, and trust me the lawyers will waltz right in.
As I wrote this article, voting was underway for Ms. Ketanji Brown Jackson as Justice Breyer’s replacement on the U.S. Supreme Court. While many are downright giddy over the prospect of Ms. Brown serving on our nation’s highest court, some have equally praised her hairstyle as some sort of civil right victory for her hair. In an NBC opinion piece, Robyn Autry, opines: “…Jackson’s hairdo matters — particularly her Sisterlocks… The style is appealing because it’s versatile but also has a consistent shape, with such thin locks that the overall appearance can mimic unlocked hair strands…The significance of appearance isn’t just about styling choices. It’s about identity, life experience and perspective. We might see this as a subtle reflection of wider criminal justice reform tackling who serves as law enforcers and even who gets selected as jurors. What’s considered uniform shifts as we broaden our understanding of who belongs in these institutional spaces and what they bring with them when they enter. Inclusion and shared purpose don’t require the denial of social difference. That’s an important message that a hairstyle can help deliver, particularly since Black people’s hair has a long history of public interest and has been both a subject of oppression and a symbol of liberation.”
Are you kidding, NBC? When considering a lifetime appointment to our nation’s highest court which has the authority to truly transform our lives, should any American care one iota about what a judge’s hairstyle looks like or should the focus be on the candidate’s legal mind, scholastic achievements, thought processes and adherence to the Constitution and rule of law?
So for the 47 Senators who voted against her confirmation, it certainly wasn’t because she stopped the deportation of illegal aliens as a sitting District Court Judge — a decision quickly reversed by the Appellate Court as not adhering to the plain meaning of the law, or the fact that she’s a board member of a private school which promotes books such as “Anti-Racist Baby”, or the fact that she wrote that the United States government engaged in war crimes, or the fact that she sentenced a child pornographer to only three months when he was facing a maximum of 10 years under federal sentencing guidelines, or her inability to provide a definition of a woman; No, not one of the 47 votes against her confirmation was because of the foregoing, but as CROWN suggests, because of her hairstyle?
We are all Americans. There is entirely too much time and energy being spent in this country pointing out our individual differences. Think about it come election time. The only identity politics we should truly care about is our common love of America, but if you desire 100 percent equality in hairstyle, why not all just shave our heads? Bald men of America unite —there’s always hair club for men.
