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The American people are frustrated.

I miss sometimes the buzz of America. A sense that anything can change at the drop of a hat. In a way, it's an exhausting thing to live with.

What I think is frustrating for Americans is that it feels like more was going to change with Obama.

When I was going to school, I just wanted to be like everybody else. I would pull at my hair to try and get it to lie straight. America was where I would consume and absorb black culture, buy Ultra Sheen and watch 'Soul Train,' but I still had that weird in-between thing.

Every time I have visited the U.S., I have been asked to let loose my hair and remove the hair pins. Each time, I have put up a defiant face.

It felt to me like America was always wanting to resolve things too quickly, without thinking through what the costs and consequences would be and how that affects an individual living in that world. Then as I grew up and went about my life, I think I just got more and more interested in that gray area where things are not so easily quantified.

When you change something like your hair, the whole world changes also.

We were constantly moving to different countries and adjusting to new things. It was such a free feeling. I'm glad I didn't have a traditional upbringing.

I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.