I don’t know what it’s like in other school districts in other cities, but working in the school system here in the nation’s capital has been a challenge – and it has nothing to do with the academic performance of students. For me, the challenge is how to channel disapproval and annoyance into something that does not resemble any of that. As an old fuddy-duddy who came of age in the black-is-beautiful era, seeing the majority of girls walking around school wearing vast amounts of fake hair is distressing. Seldom is there a nap or kink – fake or otherwise – to be seen. The sight of all that long, flowing hair invariably reminds me of a long ago incident about which I wrote at the time.

The morning of February 4, 1999 was a cool and cloudy one. As was usual on a school day, I took my grandson to school and walked the one block back to the corner of 18th and California Streets to wait for a bus.

Shortly before 9:00 am, Metrobus number 9388 pulled up and stopped. As the doors parted, a young white woman about to disembark was telling a black woman seated behind the driver how rude and ill-mannered she was. In a blink of my eyes, the black woman leapt up, grabbed a handful of the young white woman’s hair, and dragged her back up the steps and onto the bus. The battle ensued.

Fool that I am, I expected the driver to intervene. I thought his duty in such situations was to stop the bus and summon the authorities. That driver sat there as if he were in a ringside seat at a Las Vegas title bout. In disgust, I rushed between the women, trying to separate them and demanding that they stop. The bus was not crowded and most of the few other passengers were seated near the front. Some – black, white, Hispanic, but all women – rose from their seats and made vocal or physical efforts to help end the fight. One young black woman I had seen on the bus on previous mornings was yelling at the hair-puller and telling her how “uncouth” she was. From this, I surmised that the attacker had earned the criticism she had received from the woman she was trying to pummel.

“Let go of her hair,” I told the black woman on my back.

“Tell her to let go of my arm,” she replied.

“Let go of her,” I told the young white woman who had either fallen or been pushed onto the long seat in front of me.

Soon enough, the altercation ended. The white woman, with hair all over her head, got herself together and left the bus. The black woman, the very picture of a staid, middle-class matron with not a hair out of place, resumed her seat behind the driver and began a series of occasional mutterings about slavery, white incest and the like. Fool that I am, I thought everything was over.

As I walked down the aisle to take my usual seat at the back of the bus, I could not help but notice both the glee and disdain in the eyes of some of the black passengers. An uppity white had been getting her comeuppance, and I had presumed to stop it. A black man seated with me in the back sought to drive the point home.

“That’ll teach her she cain’t talk any way she want to niggahs,” he said before correcting himself by adding “I mean, black folks. I wouldn’t ‘a got in the middle of no fight,” he went on. “S’pose one of ‘em had a knife. You could ‘a got stabbed. All heroes are dead heroes.”

I felt no need to explain heroism had nothing to do with my actions. I don’t enjoy watching people debase themselves, I get no pleasure from seeing anyone being assaulted, and I knew the longer the fight went on, the longer the bus would sit there and the longer it would take me to get to work.

It soon became obvious I had annoyed the man by interrupting his fun. He proceeded to annoy me by using his dead-heroes line as a refrain. I knew I should have ignored him, but I finally told him his attitude about heroes would never get anyone anywhere. With that, I decided to leave the bus two stops early. As I waited at the back door, he loudly called out “You have a good day, brutha, and don’t forget to get a haircut.”

The bus stopped, but I stood there with my hand on the door thinking, “I just stopped one fight. Do I really want to start another?” At that point in my life, I had been wearing dreadlocks for twenty-one years, and that ignoramus had just told me to get a haircut. I couldn’t let it pass. I walked back to where “iggy” was seated.

“Do you have something you want to say to me?” I asked.

“I just did,” he answered, looking out of the window.

“Well, let me say something to you,” I began. “I don’t get haircuts. I’m a proud black man who doesn’t feel there is anything wrong with nappy hair. I’m happy to be nappy.” I didn’t add it appeared he never missed an appointment with the barber to rid himself of any trace of a kink. I didn’t point out that Ms. Michelle Tyson sitting up front muttering about white people sat there with her hair chemically processed to make it look as much like a white woman’s as possible. Instead, I got off the bus at my regular stop to transfer to the subway.

I don’t mean to give the impression that I believe those blacks who wear their hair uncut and unchemicalized are above all others. To mangle the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the coiffure on one’s head is not necessarily an indication of the contents of one’s character. I remember a saying from the ‘60’s, when black beauty came to mean something other than a horse or a pill: some people with Afros on their heads, the saying went, had processed minds. (For those who don’t know what a “process” is, look at a photograph of almost any black male entertainer taken prior to the late ‘60’s.) I will venture to suggest, however, that how one chooses to see oneself reflected in a mirror may be a reflection of the image in the mind’s eye.

On the train, I realized I couldn’t discuss the bus incident with some of my co-workers – black women who wear their hair straightened. I thought my foul mood and my thinking on the subject might cause hurt feelings. Once at the office, I did talk to a white male colleague. He got a big laugh out of the “haircut” line.

“I haven’t heard anyone yell ‘get a haircut’ since the ‘60’s,” he said. “It was usually construction workers yelling it at hippies, and now the construction workers look like hippies.”

I also told a black female co-worker what happened, a woman who wore her hair in its natural form. She and I had just had a good yuck the day before after reading a Washington Post article about black Christian hair salons. The article mentioned that everyone prays before the stylists start their work.

“Yeah,” she had said, “They’re praying alright, praying ‘Please, Lord, don’t let them fuck up my hair!’”

As we discussed my bus ride, I told her how strongly I believed the black woman grabbed the white woman’s hair partly out of hair envy.

“You mean like penis envy?” she jokingly asked.

“Yeah, I guess so”, I said, although I’m not sure such a thing exists. Hair envy, on the other hand, is something I’m convinced is real.

Later in the day, a friend called and I recounted my morning adventure. As I told him about the fight, he cackled. When I told him how disheartening it had been to see the reactions of some of the bus passengers, he asked how could I not understand. He then launched into a lecture on American race relations and the history of blacks in this country. I interrupted him to remind him he was preaching to the choir. I know the socio-political-cultural-economic dynamics of it all. I know that every human being dealing with the vagaries of everyday life has varying abilities to deal with the pressures, but that to be black in America means to be fitted with an additional pressure gauge – let’s call it the rage gauge – that other Americans tend not to notice.

Without knowing what transpired before I boarded that bus, I know the young white woman chastising the black one about her manners did not think about the other woman’s ability to cope with what was being said, how it was being said, and by whom. I know why that woman assaulted her accuser and I know why some of the observers approved. I told my friend on the telephone I understood perfectly, but it still did not make it right. He told me I was being pious.

We then talked about hair. I told him about “iggy” telling me to get a haircut. He howled. I mentioned the Post article about the Christian hair salons. He didn’t believe it was a simple human interest story. He believed the women in the story were being made fun of and didn’t know it. To him, the Post was just another instrument of a white racist establishment.

Reading that article helped show me how my own attitude had evolved over the years. I no longer believe black women who press or perm their hair, or who wear tracks or wigs do so because they hate themselves. I just believe they hate their hair. Only a few days ago, a young woman with whom I now work suggested it’s nothing more than just hating to have to deal with their hair . Yesterday, my wife pointed out this whole fake hair thing has become a phenomenon that transcends race, noting that white celebrities have embraced it as well. That’s true, but I haven’t noticed any of them buying and wearing naps.

As if I hadn’t already thought about hair enough that day fourteen years ago, my intern at the time returned from her lunch hour with her hair newly done. She had exchanged the African head wrap she had worn to work that morning for a Grace Kelly sort of “do.” She was very disappointed. The stylist she wanted was out, the one she had kept running to the bathroom to throw up, and the end result was nothing like the photograph she had taken with her as a guide. It was a very bad hair day, indeed.