The Haircut Woman

I was going to write about a time in my life when I was stopped a lot while driving.  I was darker then, a result of living in Los Angeles; I had long dark hair; and — here’s the kicker — I wore a poncho.  (Hippies back then had no idea about cultural appropriation.  If it looked shiny, we stole it.). It was only a very long time later that I figured out that the police were stopping me for Driving While Hispanic.

Then I realized that some police stops over a period of about three or four years was nothing compared to the terror that black and brown people face from the police their entire lives, especially since my driver’s license, with my non-Hispanic name, was an almost literal get-out-of-jail-free card.  I was doing that thing that lots of white people do, making the story about themselves instead of about the people it really concerned.  And so, instead of writing about that time, I urge you to read articles by actual Black Lives Matter protesters, who know a hell of a lot more about this subject than I do.

I do want to write about something that’s been bothering me, though, a news story I saw a while ago.  It isn’t about anything as consequential as the police murder of black people, but there’s an important point behind it, and, like I said, it bugged the hell out of me.

The story was about people who were protesting to end the lockdown, and it showed a woman holding a sign that said, “I Want a Haircut.”  It was such a ridiculous statement that my first reaction was over the top as well.  “You know who else wanted a haircut?” I wanted to tell her.  “Anne Frank.  Nelson Mandela.  John McCain, when he was a prisoner of war.”

I didn’t stop there, though.  For some reason I couldn’t get this idiot out of my mind.  I ranted about her to anyone who would listen.  One woman said I should get a Dorothea Lange photograph of migrants during the Depression and PhotoShop it so one of them would be holding that sign.  Another friend said, “You know, she does look pretty bad without that haircut, so I’d say yeah, I’d be willing to die so she can get one.”

How on earth did we get this selfish?  What happened to the people who gave up paper and metal and gasoline during World War II, and not just for a few months but for years?  How did we get a population that thinks their least whim trumps all other considerations, including the health of everyone around them, including their older relatives?  I mean, it’s nice that this woman apparently never had to suffer a day in her life, that the worst thing she can imagine is her hair being a little shaggy, but when did we stop teaching people about compassion, about empathy?

What’s even scarier is that the people funding these protests do not have this woman’s best interests at heart.  They are people like Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education, whose businesses are losing revenue from shutdown of the economy.  (I know this sounds like an unhinged tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory, so here’s a link.)

The underlying assumption of these people was always that the workers should sacrifice themselves to the owners, but it’s never been presented this starkly.  The same groups had raised protests against Obamacare too, and I was amazed at how successful they were, how they had convinced so many people to be outraged that the government wanted to give them affordable doctors and healthcare.  But the premise behind these new protests is even more incredible -- “Sure, I want to go back to work and get sick and die.”  It’s just horrifying to think that billionaires are freaking out because the money isn’t flowing in as readily as before, and that they will do anything to get it back, including kill their fellow humans.  I mean, I knew they just didn’t care, but wow -- they really just don’t care.

The only good thing is that it looks like people aren’t going along with this one as readily.  Funny how being faced with actual death can change your opinion.

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Open Road Books is offering Travellers in Magic for $1.99 on June 29.  It’s a collection of some of my short stories: one Hugo nominee, one World Fantasy nominee, and several Nebula nominees.  There’s also one story original to the book, a story that was so weird I didn’t think I could sell it anywhere — and then Gardner Dozois reprinted it in his The Year’s Best Science Fiction.