Black Twitter Slams 'New York Post' For Ignorant Story About Black Woman ‘Setting Her Hair On Fire’
There have been many instances in media history where readers and viewers could tell there were no Black people in the room when a certain decision was finalized. From the Pepsi protesting commercial starring Kendall Jenner to the many times Vogue has been slammed for cultural appropriation, there seems to be no shortage of moments that make people of color face-palm.
The latest instance in which a company could have greatly benefited from simply asking a Black person for input before hitting publish comes from the New York Post and its apparent ignorance of protective styles for Black women.
On July 9, the Post tweeted about a Black woman who was “photographed setting her hair on fire aboard an MTA train.”
“Just when you thought the subways couldn’t smell any worse,” the Post wrote. “A woman was photographed setting her hair on fire aboard an MTA train Tuesday. The snap, posted to Reddit, shows the unidentified woman taking a lighter to her long, multi-colored locks while casually seated aboard the train.”
The only problem was she wasn’t “setting her hair on fire,” she was sealing her ends, something Black women do when wearing synthetic hair.
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Many people on Twitter slammed the Post for creating a negative story about a common Black experience without doing their research first.
Eventually the article was updated to include the note, “One poster on the message board suggested the woman was fusing together the ends of a weave.”
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