Dear Cheryl Underwood,

Before you were added to the five woman panel of CBS’ daytime show “The Talk,” your rise as a professional comedian was a sure and steady one. You had regular appearances on HBO’S Def Comedy Jam, hosting duties on BET’s Comic View, a Sirius satellite radio slot and film cameos. So given your resume, the national prominence you enjoy is earned and deserved.

But with a wider platform comes extra accountability, so it shouldn’t have surprised you that fellow African-American viewers expressed immediate outrage at the self-loathing comments you made from your televised perch about African-American hair.

The segment started easily enough, with Sharon Osbourne sharing a quote from model Heidi Klum about her ritual of shaving the heads of her biracial sons (born of her union with pop singer, Seal) and preserving the locks in plastic baggies. That was when, to the uproarious laughter of your co-hosts, you questioned the practice out loud. “Why would you save Afro hair?”

When Sara Gilbert tried explaining that she’d also kept her son’s cut-offs, you reiterated the disdain by stressing exactly what you meant: “[But your son’s hair] is probably some beautiful, long, silky stuff. That’s not what an Afro is!”

Even when others tried changing the subject, your insistence at carrying on about wig-wearers avoiding “curly, nappy, beady” stuff in beauty supply stores made your African-American peers and supports wonder why it was so easy for you to downgrade a uniquely ethnic trait that the majority or us are born with, yourself included.

How can it be so easy for a woman with the same features that have been historically been portrayed as ‘unattractive’ have no qualms about reinforcing that shallow and Eurocentric beauty standard on such a visible platform?

The backlash from Twitter and other sources of social media was angry immediate: “Sheryl Underwood is an all around sad state of affairs.” “”Black babies—these are children she’s picking on!” “My hair is kinky, coily, fuzzy & there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong w/ your hair either.”

If you were some sort of industry ingenue Ms. Underwood, the cringe-inducing crack would have been overlooked, but given your experience in the spotlight, you should already be aware of the scrutiny that television can generate. And as a black woman yourself, you’re know that the socially-reinforced contempt of our tresses goes back to the painful origins of slavery: Months of oceanic travel in filthy cargo holds and no access to our homemade hair potions created the “dreadful” impression that our God-given tresses made on the Europeans.

After centuries of enduring such derision, why would you of all people undermine the strives we’ve made to reclaim our images and earn respect? How does mocking the features of an entire race, especially one that you obviously share lineage with, become something acceptable to laugh at?

Even though it took a few days, I do appreciate that you apologized, characterizing your choice of words as “a fumbling attempt at humor that missed the target and hit my people squarely in the heart…..my words were wrong, and inappropriate. I hope that in time, you’ll forgive me.”

We can do that, Ms. Underwood, if you also promise first to forgive yourself for internalizing that garbage and spewing it aloud to a worldwide audience.

Because when seasoned professionals who should know better make people into punchlines, the results are anything but funny.