Hair is a huge part of kids’ identity. And transracial adoptions have more than doubled since 1999. That’s why the nonprofit Styles 4 Kidz is helping adoptive and biracial parents learn how to style their children’s hair. ️
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00You have curls that are clean, narrow, and hydrated, okay?
00:17We are an organization whose mission is to provide hair care resources,
00:22training, and education for families that are transracially adopting,
00:27fostering African and African-American children.
00:30Because these resources are not widely available as it relates to their specific community,
00:37parents sometimes find themselves overwhelmed.
00:40Something we often hear is that they're walking to a beauty supply
00:44and they don't know what to choose,
00:46and they don't really have a close connection with other African-American families
00:51who can kind of walk them through that process.
00:57You can hold it while you're brushing the ends, like I'm doing right here,
01:17because she needs those trims.
01:19She got a lot of bad ends from cutting it loose.
01:21That's where that comes from.
01:27I think that families don't realize how important hair is for their kids.
01:49First of all, it's an important part of their identity and who they are as a person,
01:53how they identify themselves with the world.
01:56Hair is a huge part of that.
01:58And so if it's not taken care of, the next thing is their confidence is affected
02:04and their self-esteem and how they feel about themselves.
02:07A lot of our families live in communities that are not diverse.
02:10And so where you find is that you really just don't have anybody to turn to.
02:26I would like to see everybody embracing their natural hair and not changing it.
02:35And I think we're starting to really see more people embracing their natural hair.
02:42And I just see that trend just taking off in the workforce,
02:46is embracing a person's ability instead of looking at their hair
02:50and what's quote-unquote considered to be normal or acceptable based on the majority.
02:56That there are people out there that have real skills,
02:58and you could be missing the person that you need
03:00because you're discriminating based on their hair or their culture.