Coffee Rhetoric

Lori Hahn inspired us. Her TRB review on Thurs­day came from a search for a local blog. She found a great post from her area. We thought we’d see if we could do the same around our part of the planet and found a site called Con­necti­cut Web­sites. We were impressed by the site called Cof­fee Rhetoric. A woman whose han­dle is sim­ply Cof­fey is the author. She describes her­self and her blog, “I am merely drift­ing in an orbit between space and time, divulging my insa­tiable crav­ings for caf­feine, choco­late, cheeses, and wine… rev­el­ing in shame­less self-absorbency, and orga­nized chaos… dab­bling in div­ina­tory tools to take a peek at what the past was, what the present is, and what the future will be.”

Her post of April 20, 2008 was an excel­lent mix of story telling and insight. It is titled Hair Rais­ing, but her blog does not have a way for us to link directly to that post. But, since the post is recent you will find it. A stranger asks Cof­fey about her hair. Cof­fee and this strange both hap­pen to be African Amer­i­can. The stranger felt that peo­ple did not like her hair style so she hid it under a wig. But since Cof­fey has a sim­u­lar style, the stranger approached her. The big­ger issue is why white American’s feel they can dic­tate to peo­ple of color what they must do to fit in. Cof­fee writes, “The issue of Black hair is indeed a touchy one for the Black com­mu­nity. Many of us have a dif­fi­cult enough time com­ing to terms with spe­cific aspects of our eth­nic­ity, but when you have White peo­ple weigh­ing it, it makes it all the more dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate! While the sit­u­a­tion is a lit­tle more tol­er­a­ble now, Cor­po­rate Amer­ica has, for years, made it taboo and uncom­fort­able for Black pro­fes­sion­als (espe­cially women) to sport braids, dread­locks, and nat­u­rals to work. Pre­fer­ring that we chem­i­cally process our hair or sport hair exten­sions to prop­erly “fit in” with what ‘the major­ity’ con­sid­ers to be the norm. I highly doubt White-American women would be asked to tan and perm their hair, to add tex­ture if they want to be hired or con­sid­ered as a can­di­date for employ­ment.”

This is a ter­rific piece of writ­ing. The Ris­ing Blog­ger is hon­ored to award our Post of the Day to Cof­fee. There is no post bet­ter than one that makes us think and con­sider the big pic­ture. You will enjoy her work!

Review writ­ten by BUD WEISER.