I don't think people need to be up in arms about anything at this point...reading this, I see a history lesson.
I'm shocked that people still need a history lesson about this in this day and age, because come on son....I learned this in like fifth grade. Many black people back then were not proud of their hair, skin or looks and tried to make all these things closer to what European people had, because they thought that white people were prettier. Relaxer was one measure that people took to achieve this end, along with trying to bleach the skin. Full stop.
Momma Chaos teaches science, Papa Chaos is a psychiatrist. Both are Nigerian, immigrated here long after the Civil Rights movement, and don't even feel all that connected to African-American history, so we weren't discussing such thangs in the home. Everything I knew, I learned from my school and books. And I went to a broke down, overcrowded, South Bronx school soo...there's no excuse for other grown people to not know this.
Unless they purposefully don't want to know.
People should understand the history behind what they do, but what people should also understand is that history in some cases is just that...history. Not everything that happened in the past is necessarily a reflection upon your individual present. So relaxers came from a desire to look white. Newsflash, doesn't mean that everyone who relaxes NOW wants to look white too. If you know that you relax for reasons other than hating your natural texture, then no need to be upset by some of the insinuated accusations flying around in here.
And this isn't to say that all people today relax because they just want to. Obviously, natural, tightly coiled hair is still stigmatized in today's society, and there are many people who bonelax or buy silky straight Indian Remy out of a desire to look more Caucasian. However, these people are usually also the ones wearing purple contact lenses, getting nose jobs, and bleaching their skin within an inch of its life. And if they aren't doing all that, you can certainly tell how they feel from the way that they talk.
How someone wears their hair does not indicate how they view their race, and it's stupid to reduce it to just that.
Oh yeah, and they keep the relaxers in the ethnic isle, because the ethnic people are the ones relaxing their hair. In general,
white people don't relax their hair, so there's no reason to keep the relaxer between the Nexxus and Herbal Essences. If black people stopped using relaxers, and white people started, the relaxer would be moved to the "white product" isle. I don't think anyone is telling us to do anything.