Growing up in the projects off of 8-Mile Road in Detroit, my mother prayed for one thing -- not for an end to poverty, not for the safety of her siblings, not even for racial equality being a part of the first integrated class in her high school. The one thing she prayed for was "long hair like Betty." Mom's friend Betty was a light-skinned girl with soft locks that cascaded past her shoulders like a chocolate waterfall. My mother would pull at her own nappy roots with the hope that they would one day grow out and make her pretty and "passable" like her friend.