The Blowout vs. Press n’ Curl: Dominican Salons Compete with African-American Salons
According to the Wall Street Journal, immigrants from the Dominican Republic are “snipping away market share” from African-American stylists whose livelihood depends on our continued loyalty.
Dominican salons known for their “blowout” technique in New York since the 1980′s are growing at a rapid rate in cities across the nation.
Offering cheaper prices often by $20, the Dominican technique has traditional African-American salons up in arms. Speaking to the Washington Post, a 39-year-old stylist says, “We have Asians coming in with the beauty supplies and Dominicans coming in taking over our industry.”
But according to reports, if some African-American salons can’t beat them they’d rather join them. One salon owner opened in 2008 as a traditional African-American salon and after facing closing, she replaced her stylists with Dominicans, learned Spanish, and reduced her prices by $10 with merengue playing on the stereo. She says sales tripled.
Still “Bad Boy” Romeo Crews, a known Atlanta stylist is not worried. He says, “Let me tell you, they are helping my business because people are coming to me after the Dominicans make their hair fall out.”
Would you trade your African-American stylist for a less expensive Dominican salon? Share your thoughts with us!
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Dominican salons have not made it here yet, but I have to admit if they did come here I might try it. I stopped going to traditional African American salons years ago, my time and my money is too valuable. This appears to be the beginning of what happened with African American hair braiding salons from back in the day. Why spend two days in a salon when you can go at any time of the day, hop in a chair and be out in 8 hours – the braider only stopping to use the bathroom, and when it’s time for her lunch break, another braider stepping up and finishing.
Maybe this shift will wake up some African American salon owners who take advantage of their customer base by triple booking clients and sitting down to eat while they’ve got 5 people waiting. It’s greed and it’s wrong.
Clnmike wrote: “Fact 1: Duvaliers didnt sell jack they worked out a workers deal for it’s in your own quote babbon.
“Until the fall of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986, the Dominican government paid Duvalier $2 million every year for the right to RECRUIT up to 20,000 Haitian forced laborers to cut Dominican cane.”
*****************************************************
It only takes responding to one point to prove how lacking you are. What part of forced laborers did you not get? What part of the word forced can you just not comprehend?
Outside of the Duvalier’s henchmen gathering peasants from the countryside and transporting them to the Dominican Republican, with their ton ton macoute they were among the dirtiest and corrupt despots in the western hemisphere. This “worker’s deal” (as you so ignorantly called it) was Duvalier selling his own damn people and where do you suppose that $2 million/year went? To build Haitian infrastructures or schools? Nyet…let me help you out…the millions went right into Duvalier pockets and bank accounts. How da fuck you think he and his cronies amassed $500 million in a poor ass country like Haiti?
The way you follow behind my entries then enter just to talk shit and cry like a child and hang on my every word gives me the willies, but you sure you’re a dude? Cuz you bitch, complain and get your lil panties in a bunch like a little girl!
Step up when you obtain some real intelligence and the maturity to add to topics without resorting to your ineffective, typical, low-life, ghetto tactics. Mmmmkay?!
^^^^^Like the pot calling the kettle black. Ha!
“^^^^^Like the pot calling the kettle black. Ha!”
@Bantu
I’m neither angry nor mentally unstable. Please don’t insult me by comparing me to Akai.
The pot, dont worry, I could never be that heartless.
Man I swear when I get my hands on that zookeeper his butt is going to get kicked royally. I keep telling him to lock the cage before he leaves but here we are again with Bobo running loose and dragging it’s knuckles across a keyboard, throwing it’s excrement at people.
The only “fact” you can defend is the one that you manipulate best to spread you BS.
From the same link you provided to spread your half truths:
- Solon Louis-Jean recalls his abduction into slavery in the Dominican sugar industry: “Five Dominican soldiers arrested me and my brother in Haiti. We walked for hours to Limon, where there was a depot with more than 50 Haitians waiting. The soldiers guarded us so that no one would leave. Then they took us by bus to two different bateyes. When we arrived some soldiers gave us machetes and told us to start cutting.”
- “Using slave labor to harvest sugar in Hispaniola goes back centuries. In the 1950s, state-sponsored forced labor was legitimized through an agreement between Haiti’s dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier and the Dominican government. Until the fall of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986, the Dominican government paid Duvalier $2 million every year for the right to RECRUIT up to 20,000 Haitian forced laborers to cut Dominican cane.”
After succeeding Duvalier, President Aristide publicly opposed the “Contract,” causing a shortage of cane cutters in the Dominican Republic. Desperate to maintain the production of the nation’s main export, Dominican government officials resorted to an underground recruitment drive that resulted in widespread and coercive labor practices and forced more Haitians onto sugar plantations.”
Does that sound like Tonton, (one word ass), Macoutes kidnapping Haitians under the orders of Duvalier to you?
And were is your math at?
“How da fuck you think he and his cronies amassed $500 million in a poor ass country like Haiti?”
1956 to 1986 the Duvaliers ruled Haiti, paid two million a year for forced labor, and you translate that into 500 million dollars?
Never even bothered to do the research to see he was paid off by the United States to not go the Cuban route, and accumulated wealth from taking in foreign loans, huh?
No listen to you the devil that Duvalier undoubtedly was only got paid as a slave trafficker and the Dominicans were innocent businessmen.
Why is that?
Because it fits your sick little thinking that anyone that doesnt look like you, (which I suspect you come very close to looking like an extra from Planet of The Apes), is inferior, amoral, and unintelligent.
Your game is so transparent it’s a joke, put out a half truth, add insults, stereotypes, and highlight your “superiority” to it all.
Do us all a favor go back to your cage, have a bananna and chill out.
Clnmike do you have Tourette’s or something because you keep repeating the same old lame ‘insults’? Your “zoo,” “bobo,” “baboon” etc. tripe is corny as hell (with game like that I suspect you never get any p***y) and like a 5 year old that calls people “doodie head.” Try to man up and I’ll try to explain this again on your kindergarten level. Empress B wrote: “Their country kidnaps and enslave people from Haiti.”
Read it again if you need to but that statement was current (not past) tense and patently false in that it totally disregarded the fact that many Haitians freely cross/ed the border into the DR in search of work. Further, it implies Dominicans were the only guilty culprits when Duvalier was getting paid, his henchmen gathered peasants from the countryside and transported them to the Dominican Republican, and many of the buscones (recruiters) were friggin’ Haitian.
“Often recruiters sell Haitians for $7 to $10. Recruiters – known as buscones, or searchers – many of them of Haitian extraction, go into Haiti in the months before the harvest begins and round up as many Haitians as they can, sometimes by force, sometimes under false pretences and sometimes just by telling them there is work in the Dominican Republic (there is none in Haiti). The buscones bring the Haitians across the border, where they are held for transport to the plantations. … The recruiter then returns to Haiti to find more. (Wilentz, “A Bitter Harvest for Haitians”)”
http://haitiforever.com/windowsonhaiti/hdr-rmk2.shtml
“A network of recruiting agents, known as buscones, were allegedly employed by the sugar plantations, both CEA and privately owned, to persuade Haitians to cross the border with promises of good pay. Some workers were recruited in Haiti, others on the border, while still more were picked up once inside the Dominican Republic. … Americas Watch reported in 1989 that buscones, often Haitian themselves, were operating in Haiti, promising high wages and good conditions.”
“The benefits received by the Haitian dictatorship for supplying cheap labour to the Dominican authorities were considerable. According to Ramón Antonio Veras, Baby Doc received US $2.9 million in 1980 for facilitating the transportation of 16,000 workers to CEA plantations.”
http://www.oas.org/atip/regional%20reports/migrationinthecaribbean.pdf
Does it have to be written in crayon for you to comprehend that these millions went to Duvalier, not the coffers of the Haitian government?? And the only thing I wrote about the ton ton macoute was “with their [Haiti's] ton ton macoute they [the Duvaliers] were among the dirtiest and corrupt despots in the western hemisphere.”
It would take 250 years at $2 million/year to make $500 million and only the most lacking of individuals would have taken that to mean the Duvaliers made $500 million from República Dominicana and, obviously, that number was mentioned to highlight the fact that Duvalier and his cronies were thieves that robbed their own country blind.
Now if you want to continue with the bullshit and act as if the issue of restaveks is benign, take it up with the United Nations that “condemns restavec as a modern form of slavery where children are forced to serve the families they’ve been sent to by doing domestic work.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/29/haiti.restavek.sende.sencil/index.html
If you actually believe your simple uninformed shtick that the Duvaliers accumulated massive wealth via foreign loans and the US – instead of the truth that they stole government funds, misappropriated millions in international aid and foreign loans, confiscated peasant land, ripped off and extorted Haitian businesses and industries…then transferred those funds right to their personal bank accounts – you’re dumber than any adult should be allowed to be.
Are you so desperate to excuse and defend a BM (the Duvaliers) at all costs – and paint them as poor innocent victims of America, República Dominicana, racism and the west – that you’d overlook the thousands of black people they had a hand in murdering and millions they helped keep in grinding poverty and illiterate? If so, what does that make you? A fake ass conscious “brutha’” that doesn’t give a shit about people’s lives over saving face!
Clnmike do you have Tourette’s or something because you keep repeating the same old lame ‘insults’. Your “zoo,” “bobo,” “baboon” etc. tripe is corny as hell (with a lack of game like that I suspect you never get any p***y) and like a 5 year old that calls people “doodie head.” Try to man up and I’ll try to explain this on your kindergarten level: Empress B wrote: “Their country kidnaps and enslave people from Haiti.”
Read it again if you need to but the statement was current (not past) tense and patently false in that it totally disregarded the fact that many Haitians freely cross/ed the border into the DR in search of work. Further, it implies Dominicans were the only guilty culprits when Duvalier was getting paid, his henchmen gathered peasants from the countryside and transported them to the Dominican Republican, and most of the buscones (recruiters) were friggin’ Haitian.
“Often recruiters sell Haitians for $7 to $10. Recruiters – known as buscones, or searchers – many of them of Haitian extraction, go into Haiti in the months before the harvest begins and round up as many Haitians as they can, sometimes by force, sometimes under false pretences and sometimes just by telling them there is work in the Dominican Republic (there is none in Haiti). The buscones bring the Haitians across the border, where they are held for transport to the plantations. … The recruiter then returns to Haiti to find more. (Wilentz, “A Bitter Harvest for Haitians”)”
http://haitiforever.com/windowsonhaiti/hdr-rmk2.shtml
“A network of recruiting agents, known as buscones, were allegedly employed by the sugar plantations, both CEA and privately owned, to persuade Haitians to cross the border with promises of good pay. Some workers were recruited in Haiti, others on the border, while still more were picked up once inside the Dominican Republic. … Americas Watch reported in 1989 that buscones, often Haitian themselves, were operating in Haiti, promising high wages and good conditions.”
“The benefits received by the Haitian dictatorship for supplying cheap labour to the Dominican authorities were considerable. According to Ramón Antonio Veras, Baby Doc received US $2.9 million in 1980 for facilitating the transportation of 16,000 workers to CEA plantations.”
http://www.oas.org/atip/regional%20reports/migrationinthecaribbean.pdf
Does it have to be written in crayon for you to comprehend that these millions went to Duvalier, not the Haitian government?? And what I wrote about the ton ton macoute was “with their [Haiti's] ton ton macoute they [the Duvaliers] were among the dirtiest and corrupt despots in the western hemisphere.”
It would take 250 years at $2 million/year to make $500 million and only someone on your level would have taken that to mean Duvalier made $500 million from the DR and, obviously, that number was mentioned to highlight the fact that Duvalier and his cronies were thieves that robbed their own country blind.
If you believe your simple uninformed shtick that the Duvaliers amassed massive wealth from foreign loans and the US – instead of the truth that he stole Haitian government funds and misappropriated millions in international aid and foreign loans, confiscated peasant land and shook down and extorted Haitian businesses and industries…then transferred that money right into personal bank accounts – you’re dumber than anyone should be allowed to be.
Now if you want to continue with the bullshit and act as if the issue of restaveks is so benign, take it up with the United Nations that “condemns restavec as a modern form of slavery where children are forced to serve the families they’ve been sent to by doing domestic work.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/29/haiti.restavek.sende.sencil/index.html
Are you so pressed to excuse and defend BM (the Duvaliers) that you’d overlook the thousands they had a hand in killing and millions they helped keep in poverty and illiterate? If so, what does that make you? …fake ass conscious “brutha’” that doesn’t give a shit about people’s lives over saving face.
**IF OTHERS ARE ALLOWED TO CALL COMMENTERS “ASS,” “FOOLS” ETC., SURELY INTEGRITY MEANS THIS ENTRY IS ALLOWED TO STAND WITHOUT BEING DELETED!**
Tsk, tsk, tsk, Akai,
At this point there is no need to continue on with you, anyone who wants the truth can dig it up themselves, although I doubt there is a need to, everyone sees you for what you are anyway.
I mean really complaining about insults and questioning integrity?
You of all people?
If you cant take it dont dish it.
Congratulations BTW on getting that role in the Planet of the Apes Prequel, you will do an outstanding job.
Clnmike wrote: “At this point there is no need to continue on with you, anyone who wants the truth can dig it up themselves, although I doubt there is a need to, everyone sees you for what you are anyway.”
***************************************************************
The height of punkbitchism, bitchassness and insecurity is when a loser such as yourself takes it upon him/herself to speak for “everybody.” But, just so you know, 5 or 6 dumb ******* hardly constitutes “everybody” and I couldn’t give a shit about dumb *******, so save that for someone apt to fall for it.
But now, what? Nothing to come back with since I showed you buscones were primarily Haitian and that restaveks are considered “modern day slaves”? Ain’t got shit to say when the truth stares you dead in the eye that, a lot of times, integrity means you have to point the finger where it belongs: at your own ‘black brothers’ instead of making excuses and trying to blame whitey!
Hmpf, typical! Talk plenty mess but when you’ve the floor to back your shit, you run like a coward to avoid admitting you can’t!
See? That’s the thing about some of you Americans. You can’t listen/learn and try to dictate to/speak for the entirety of the diaspora when many of you barely know the history of your own damn country. There are 5 times more outside America, you’ve never lived for a considerable amount of time outside the US, and speak one friggin’ language.
The next time you want to get stupid, talk crap and go toe-to-toe with me – don some big boy underwear and leave the kindergarten insults in the playroom. Throw your monkey ass momma the banana then try to bring an A game.
I hail from the hair capital of the world…Detroit, and I am an advocate of the Dominican technique…I showed my stylist how to use certain products that her counterparts used and she embraced it…I once worked in the salons, so I am very aware of the “urban” techinques that are in place, my days of sitting in shops eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, paying $100 for a WBC and having my hair washed with Pantene (the nice hair product in the hood-lol) are over!
I have been going to a Domincan hair salon since 1993 ( shout out to Eddier Jr’s in the Barrio!) and honestly, I haven’t looked back since. Now to be clear, I will go to that kind of salon for certain things because I realize strengths and weaknesses. When I want my hair cut, I go to an upscale salon in Brooklyn( Time Salon/Heather) because I will spend some money on a cut and know it will be done right. Look “Clucthettes” can we agree that racism, colorism is GLOBAL…..ok? So we are not going to solve the problem on this website anytime soon. As a latina of african origin( I like to call myself the “Original La Raza”), I know all too well about the not naming and the not claiming but it is what it is and hopefully WE can change that mindset. I am very pleased with both traditional black stylist and domincan stylist, you just have to find the right one for you and tell them what you want and how you want it.
Just recently a Black hair salon opened in my area some months ago. There are 3 hair salons on my area. One Dominican, One Black American and One Haitian-American. This new one that opened seems to be pro-natural Black hair, and I think the owners are Black American too. Just to put that out there.
Recently, my friend & I were reading the poster for the new salon & it brought us to this convo about Dominican salons & Black women.
All salons in general are gonna have competition. This topic just wanted to conjure up a war amongst ethnicities. I honestly don’t see the Dominican salons going anywhere because they have mastered the art of turning the tightest curled hair, into the thinnest strand lol. Black salons arent going anywhere either. they specific styles & can be available where Dominican salons are nowhere to be found. All salons have their pro’s and cons & we all have different experiences.
So I dont see the need for ignorant racial stereotypes being spewed, as noticed on this article.Jeez!