In November I wrote about your popular picks for a Nappy Presidential Administration.
Among the colorful personalities that you nominated for president were a promoter (Don King”>, a P-funk master (George Clinton”> and a real life politician (Barack Obama”> and a poet (Toni Morrison”>.
Your fantasy choices for presidential advisers were just as eclectic and eccentric.
You nominated athletes and activists, professors and poets, comedians and reggae musicians whose choice of natural hairstyles ranged from free style to out of style.
“I pick Steve Harvey for Secretary of State because I like his fade,” said Lucy Houston about the comedian who still wears his thick black hair cut close on the sides and high and wide on the top. Harvey’s hairdo is impeccably groomed but the style harkens back to the ‘80s.
Lucy, who lives in Dallas, thinks that Harvey’s comedic prowess would be useful in negotiations with the enemy.
“He can keep everybody laughing so they won’t know what’s really going on,” she said.
Lucy’s nominee for the Department of Agriculture is comedian and activist Dick Gregory. She says that the gray-haired Gregory, who shares the same vegetarian lifestyle that she does, might be able to get the nation to be more health conscious.
The flamboyant former French tennis star Yannick Noah, who is famous for his flying dreadlocks, is Neil Foote’s nominee for nappy Secretary of State.
“He’s international and has presence,” says Neil of Plano, TX. “He could settle any differences and all sorts of problems by holding a big tennis tournament.”
Neil nominated former Miami Hurricanes running back Ricky Williams to be the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We’d know what he’d immediately legalize for medicinal purposes,” he says.
Anyone related to Bob Marley, the legendary reggae musician who popularized dreadlocks in the same way that Angela popularized the Afro should be included in a (fantasy”> nappy administration, says Angel Shannon of Randallstown , Md.
“I would nominate the entire Marley family,” Angel wrote. “The Marley mission is about spreading love and peace in the world. Anybody who is about spreading some peace in this crazy world we live in now has got my vote.”
Yannick Rice Lamb of Washington, D.C. thinks her lengthy list of nappy nominees would be suited to hold any cabinet office. Her picks included: actor-activist Harry Belafonte, author Pearl Cleage, filmmaker Julie Dash, journalists Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Farai Chideya and AIDS activist Phil Wilson.
Angela Davis, the college professor, author and radical thinker who received several nominations for President Au Naturale, was also a popular choice to be Secretary of Defense if she were still wearing the billowing Afro that became her signature.
“She would probably have more (Afro”> picks in her arsenal than B52s,” says Mary Chapman of Detroit . “With that big scary fro, she’d scare the hell out of North Korea and South Korea ,” Mary said. “She’d keep all of them in line.”
Beverly DeBase of Dallas , TX wants to see a Secretary of Defense who has a persona of peace. She nominated Wyclef Jean, the dreadlocked hip-hop artist, humanitarian and former member of the Fugees.
“With Jean, we’d never enter into war,” said Beverly of the Haitian-born performer who wrote a song called “President” which is a social commentary against war spending. Jean also established a foundation to support the poor in his impoverished homeland.
“He’d be the perfect person to smoke a peace pipe,” Beverly said of her nominee. “And I just love a man who wears dreads, period!”
