The New York Times is hellbent on being woke until the very bitter end, but the latest example that demonstrates their dedication to The Cause may be their most “out there” yet.
In a Friday piece, reporter McKenna Oxenden wrote about the problems black equestrians with natural hair face in finding helmets that fit. The framing of the story, of course, centered around insinuations of deliberate racial discrimination and how this was supposedly one more “barrier” put in front of black competitors in the sport:
The story was a big enough deal to the editors that they included it on the front page of their Saturday print edition:
Among the black equestrians they quoted were Chanel Robbins, who eight years ago changed the way she did her hair to be more in line with her father’s, who is Jamaican. As a result, that made it harder for her to find helmets that fit. According to the Times, it upset her that “society” was allegedly asking her “to change”:
“I finally freaking feel like myself, and now society is asking me to change,” Ms. Robbins, 27, of Alliston, Ontario, said as she choked back tears. “I just want to be able to ride.”
The Times also went on to note that the sport “remains overwhelmingly white,” which is supposed to make the reader think that the lack of helmet options that would accommodate black people is purposeful:
Black equestrians have long felt virtually invisible in a sport that remains overwhelmingly white. For those with natural hair, which for many is a declaration of pride and Black identity, finding a helmet that fits properly can be nearly impossible, creating yet another barrier to full inclusion.
Another rider, Isabella Tillman, was said to be “horrified” by the things she says she’s had to do over the years to make her helmets work for her:
Isabella Tillman, who wears her hair in natural, buoyant curls in the summer and straightens it in the winter, is horrified when she thinks about the helmets she has used in 20 years of riding.One sat atop her head like a traffic cone, she said. Another was so small it gave her headaches. And one was so big, she had to stuff it with maxi pads.
“Helmet inclusivity is important, Black equestrians said, because it could mean the difference between life and death,” the paper also wrote.
They also talked to helmet companies, the vast majority of who were quoted either saying they were not aware there were any issues with black riders and helmets or that maybe the riders who were having the issues needed to change their hairstyles considering a redesign could not only be costly and take a long time but also may ultimately not end up doing what an equestrian’s helmet needs to do: fit snugly in order to protect their heads:
In an interview, James Ruder, the chief executive [of Back on Track], said the company’s helmets can accommodate most riders. He added that he had “never once heard” about a Black rider struggling with helmet fit.“If you have an ‘oddity’ — and I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the people who have weird hairstyles — but if you have a hairstyle that impacts the functionality of the helmet, you might just have to change it,” Mr. Ruder said.
While this inconvenient reality check fauxfended some of the readers in Ms. Oxenden’s Twitter comment section, sanity seemed to prevail in the comments to the Times piece itself (which is now closed to new comments), with several pointing out that there was no need to make a supposed lack of “helmet inclusivity” into a racial issue, and others noting how it’s not just black people who have problems with helmets fitting sometimes.
Times reader “RRI,” for instance, wrote this comment in response to one of the riders who said she wondered if she should abandon the sport for one where she felt like she “mattered”:
That’s a bit much: abandoning a sport one loves for the sake of a hair style. And it is a hair style issue: Black hair is still Black hair, still “natural,” still proudly signifies one’s ancestry, if cut short and not straightened. It’s a fair issue to raise with manufacturers, but to intimate it is some kind of discriminatory barrier to safe participation in equestrian sports is more petulant than principled.
“M” wrote:
I too am a rider and agree that equestrian helmets could do with a reboot. However even I with straight blonde hair have to “redo it” so my helmet fits properly. So in the meantime comb your hair straight back and flat and then tie it at nape of the neck with hair tie and you should be good. I doubt any helmet maker will design a helmet to accommodate every individual hairstyle. Remember at the end of the day safety trumps style.
“Mihail Dragulin” asked:
This article is a solution in search of a problem. How did the author take a simple supply and demand problem and turn it into a inclusion, diversity and race issue??
With all due respect, clearly Mr. Dragulin doesn’t know the Times very well.
Conservative Twitter users, meanwhile, responded accordingly:
I read the Times’ tweet and article and one of the first things I thought of were the women in oppressed parts of the world who have been forced to cover themselves head to toe in order to compete in swimming competitions, and yet there are women in free societies who can choose to wear their hair any way they want to but turn around and complain—with some actually crying—when the style they’ve chosen doesn’t work in a helmet designed to save your life. Making it worse, they imply without evidence that it’s set up this way on purpose because of their skin color.
A true First World Problem if there ever was one. I agree with the others, if one has this problem when they try to put on a helmet, they should change their hairstyle before they ride. It’ll keep them much safer when they ride their horse over the mountain that some of their fellow riders have made out of a molehill.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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