Perhaps I am too easily offended...

But this was written today in our local newspaper as part of a regularly featured opinions column.

"While I'm on a rant here, how 'bout dreadlocks! I mean seriously people! It really gets on my nerves to see these young, otherwise attractive white kids that come from upper middle class families sporting something that originated in third world countries. Do you really think it's cool to not wash your hair for months on end just so you can tr yto a statement that your a conservationist? Come on, you're not fooling anyone with your nappy headed, java expresso drinkin', foreign cigarette smokin' facade. Tell you what to do if you're one of the above mentioned people and you really feel the need to wear 'dreads' as they call them. Take yourself a trip to a third world country and spend about 30 years livin' there broke as a joke and doin' volunteer work with poor indigent people. Then when you come back home to Nebraska, you will have earned the right to wear such a nasty mop on your head. But until such a time as you return, cut that junk off and join the rest of civilized society."

In all fairness, the column was titled Deadlines, Dreadlocks, and Deadbeats so the focus was not just on hairstyles. And I do understand the jist of what he is saying: that some people look ridiculous in certain hairstyles and that often making a choice to do something like dreadlocks does not give you an identity as someone who believes certain things and then lives out those beliefs. (Although I'm not really sure why we should care too much about what hairstyle someone has and why it matters if we think it looks ridiculous because it's not our hair.)

That said, I found most of the writing offensive and uneducated. Although it was written about white kids, the writing had this underlying hint of racism and classism that I found unsettling. The impression I was left with was the dreadlocks are a result of some destitute third world country and are not appropriate or desirable because of this. This to me comes off as an insult to those who live in third world countries, that anything that comes from a place such as that is not worthy. The words "nappy headed" and "nasty mop" also left me feeling out sorts. Technically nappy refers to heavily textured hair, not just dreadlocks so is this man saying that anyone with heavily textured hair has a gross hair or that hair like that is unattractive and nasty? The writer also acts as if he is oblivious or ambivelent about the use of a word like "nappy" which often has racial conotations. While I am not the type of person to jump on every word uttered as full of racial significance, I can't help but wonder if his use of the word was deliberately rude or just woefully ignorant. (Granted, we've been thinking about locing Kenson's hair so maybe I am a bit more sensitive than others might be. Even so, if it had been written about another hairstyle, I think I would have still felt offended.)

I guess today was a time where I felt myself want to go into Mama Bear mode a bit, where I wondered how reading something like that would make my kids feel once they were school aged or teenagers. My husband was less offended than I. He could put aside some of the parts of the op ed piece that were a bit out there and see the big picture of what the man was writing about: conformity disguised as alternative living disguised as someone who has a social conscience but has never actually done anything meaningful with their life. What say you?