In The Kitchen

In the Kitchen In the story In the Kitchen, Henry Louis Gates Jr. makes the point that there are some things that you just cannot take away from people, such as character traits and people's ways of life. Those are things that you cannot get rid of no matter how much "hair grease"� you put in your life. When Gates was a young boy, he would watch his mother do the people's hair in their kitchen and would marvel at how the black person's hair would always go back to the kings no matter how good it looked when it was done up, when it hit the water, it went right back to the kinks. The kitchen in Gates' mother's house was also a permanent, irredeemable kink. When a black person would straighten their hair, as soon as they washed it or even got water on their hair, it would go back to the natural kink that it originated at. Many people in life try to forget their background or where they came from and ignore their roots, but that is a part of you that you will always have with you and no matter how much you try and make it go away, your roots are a permanent thing and can never be erased. In the past 30 years, the superficialities of the world have become the predominant thing. Models are 15 pounds underweight and starve themselves to look like the "ideal"� woman, whites try to be and look like blacks, blacks try to be and look like whites. There are so many ways in the world today that you can cover up your roots and who you are, but there is not one way that you can get rid of them. From plastic surgery, to skin lightening or darkening, to the clothes we wear or the way we talk. Nobody should ever be ashamed of who they are, that is what makes America beautiful as a country, because we have so much diversity between our citizens, and that we are able to come together and work as one nationality.

Some black people try to cover up the kinks in their hair, like they are embarrassed of them, but they can never escape them. No matter if you put wax, oil, grease, or a