If there’s one thing I’ve had to deal with, continuously throughout my life, it is white people touching my hair. Friends, family, strangers, co-workers, bosses, love interests. Anyone and everyone. It is something that has been done to me, as opposed to something I have sought out. The key theme there being a total lack of consent.
I am now very strict about white people touching my hair. They are simply just not allowed. It is a militant strictness I have had to adapt in order to survive everyday life as a person of colour. I have become so aware of people’s reactions to my hair, a loosely hung afro, a mixture between curly and kinky, that there is almost a sixth sense I have adopted when it comes to it being touched.
Ingrained in me now, is the ability to duck pairs of eager and ignorant pale hands (matrix style). To politely and sharply reply, no, actually, you can’t touch it. To have the reason at the tip of my tongue ‘because it’s a microaggression, and it makes me feel like an animal at the zoo’. To have the patience to not blow up when I am met with a reply of ‘but it’s just so beautiful, I’m paying you a compliment, I love Black people!’ To take deep breaths, and to walk away. To remind myself that I am not aggressive just because I choose to say no. That is my right.
I know this is something that so many white people just don’t understand. To the exterior world, outside of the community, Black people’s relationships with their hair have been seen as unnecessarily sensitive and ‘aggressive’.
There is a disconnect, a lack of understanding lost between the exchange of reaching hands, annoyed Black faces, and ignorant white people.
An experience lost in translation when they are told no. The thing that they don’t see, is the historically complicated and painful history Black people have with their hair. So let this article, this rambling of words, be an insight, from my point of view at least, why it’s such a heavy topic, and so much more than hair.
We have been told, for as long as we can remember, that our hair is ugly. A mess. A mop, a sponge. Between cries as a child, lost in a white world, to growing up and seeing no representation of afro’s or Black hair in the media, to the first time we decide to wear our hair out proudly and are met with abuse, embarrassment and laughter.
Cultural appropriation. Often the argument of ‘Appreciation not Appropriation’ escapes the lips of many others, and it is very possible, from my point of view, to celebrate someone else's culture without appropriating it. The difference is a matter of respect, education and acknowledgement. When Kim Kardashian wore blackface on the cover of 7 Holiday, there is no argument for appreciation. When someone has a history of taking aspects of Black culture and pasting it onto themselves without any recognition of where it came from, to the extent that braids, big butts and hoop earrings are often associated with the Kardashians instead of their African roots, it hurts. It cuts so deep, to a place inside of the Black heart that I just don’t think allies often understand.
Imagine being beaten down your whole life, told you are ugly, that your hair is ridiculous, that your butt is ghetto, your hoops are cheap. Imagine it scarring you so much that you didn’t wear your hair down until you were 22. That you didn't dare to let your afro shine free and proudly until you met your first Black friend who told you, girl, you’re beautiful, exactly the way you are. Imagine fighting, tooth and nail, to come to terms with loving your hair despite what the whole world has told you your whole life. Now imagine seeing a white girl do and wear the exact same thing, and not only be congratulated and championed for it, but claim it as their own and remove us from the history behind the culture. Can you see now, why it cuts so deep? Why when you touch my hair, I will slap your hand away and duck your eager fingers, itching for a feel. I call bullshit, I call hypocrite, I call micro-aggression. Often humiliated by being told no, white people have turned to insult me and tell me off for not taking it as a compliment. While I understand there is an ignorance behind this behaviour, it doesn’t make it innocent.
I went to a birthday party a while back, and I was the only Black person there. This didn’t initially bother me because, well, at some point I had to get used to it, and they felt like a safe group of people. Friends who I have had listen to and understand my experience and how exhausting it has been to just exist. Even so, during that party, I had at least 10 people touch my hair. I had 2 girls ask me if I could do braids on them. Another awkwardly approached me and told me he loved my hair and he wasn’t racist in the same breath. Then I had a guy tell me that he did afro hair and that I should hire him next time I got box braids. As if I would take money away from a Black business and give it to a white man. Is that not the definition of appropriation? It shocked and rattled me a little bit because this was weeks after the waves of protests and uprising we have seen from the Black Lives Matter revolution. This was months after all of these people had seen me post, repetitively and tiredly, on social media, exactly why they shouldn't touch my hair, and why they shouldn’t degrade my people. It scared me that they still didn't get it. How othering the experience is of being touched without consent, looked at like an animal, like something other than human.
And yes, I know that their actions came from a place of appreciation and love, but does it matter? No matter how good their intentions were, the end result was making a Black person uncomfortable, and that’s never okay. It is time white people decided, once and for all, that they should simply keep their hands to themselves. Yes, even if it's your best friend. Even if it’s your cousin. You don’t get to be excused because your actions come from a place of sincerity and clumsy appreciation.
Because at the end of the day, I don’t feel your appreciation when you touch my hair. I feel all the hands that have come before you, I feel the double standards in your touch, loving my hair but equally jabbing me with micro-aggression after micro-aggression. I hear the names I was called at school. I feel the fetishisation and objectification of my brown body.
Being touched and stared at reduces me to something so much less than what I am. I am not my hair. I am not my skin. I am not your expectation (thank you India Arie, for these words). And at the very least, ask before you touch. But asking is not much better, because it puts me in the position of having to say no. Of having to be the bad guy.
My hair is my crown, for the simple reason that, for most of my life, I absolutely hated it. It was a painful, in fact excruciating journey, to understand that I was not the thing that was ugly, that it was society who was in the wrong, not the locks of my hair. So when I wear it out, when I let that shrinkage take over and feel it curl into a bed of beautiful, curly and unmanageable hair, I rejoice. Sometimes, I even cry tears of joy, because I look at it, for the first time maybe ever, and I see beauty.
Having shrugged off the conditioning of society and swapped it for some deep conditioning of my Black-owned hair products, I saw myself for who I really was.
And I saw beauty. So don’t touch my hair, because it is my crown, it is a symbol of self-love, it is a story of unlearning the internalised racism that white people and a white society put on me in the first place. It is so much more than a quick feel of my roots, or my braids, or my locks. It is a part of me that I have finally come to love, and it does not need to be complicated by the hands of those who do not understand it.
I feel that the Black community can see the racist notions of society in every corner because our eyes have always been open to it. Go on google right now and type in ‘Professional Hairstyles’ followed by ‘Unprofessional Hairstyles’ and see the segregated racism in the algorithms of Google. Since when did I have to put my hair up if I wanted to be more seriously considered for a job? Why do I have to hide my hair and pull it into the conformed expectations that is the slicked back bun on my hair, in order to please my employers and reduce the target on my back? The policing of Black hair is endless and exhausting.
The history of hair is so deeply rooted in Black culture. In African countries, tribes fashion their hair to signify different things. From religion, to whether or not you were married, to what position you held, hair has always been so much more than a style. The process of styling hair itself could and still does take hours, braiding became a ritual, and the outcome the signifier of the event. Our hair is power. It is strength. As literally the highest point of your body, hair was supposed to allow spirits and gods to access the soul. It is so much more complicated, the history so much richer than most can imagine.
When I see white girls wearing braids, I do have to hold my tongue. And this is something that is not a shared belief in the Black community, I know many of my friends don’t care, and some can’t stand it. We are not a monolith; our opinions differ and I can only speak for myself. But the reason why I recoil when I see it, is because braiding was massively influenced by slavery. Africans taken from their homes and sent on ships were of course not allowed to look after their hair. They didn’t have the tools, the time, or the privilege. Hair would become matted and demeaningly referred to as wool, and so shaved off almost always. A complete stripping of identity, the deliberate eradication of Black culture. When the hair grew back, braiding was literally a way for slaves to protect their hair. Hence it being called a protective hairstyle. It was also a way to pass down knowledge, by passing down hairstyles from generation to generation.
More often than not, the hair on a slave's head was the only way they could be creative, celebrate the artistic joy of styling their hair and pass this to others.
What’s even more amazing, is that braiding and cornrows were used as a little ‘map to freedom’. Slaves would braid escape routes and maps into each other's hair as a signifier and secret way to communicate with each other on how to escape the plantation. It doesn’t even stop there; the thickness of Black hair and braiding was used by our ancestors to store and keep rice and seeds before journeying the Middle Passage. The creativity, bravery, innovation and intelligence runs so deep.
When we wear our braids, it is not just for style, but because it promotes growth, it looks after our hair and it keeps it protected from outside conditions. This is inherently Black, and so yes, when I see white people with braids, I do have to grit my teeth, because I know the chances of them understanding the history of the hairstyle they have is so slim. In my opinion, if you're going to wear it, it’s your choice, but at least know the history, because chances are, you won't want to wear them after you understand the spiritual, intergenerational relationship we have to braids. And yes, while slavery ended in1865, the emotional and physical trauma remains intact in generations of today. Again, intergenerational trauma.
The Black Power movement of the 60’s created a turning point in Black communities and our relationship to ourselves and our hair. The Afro turned from something that was to be embarrassed of and hidden, to a symbol of unadulterated and unfiltered Black Power. Literally; the Tignon Law meant Black women legally had to cover their hair in public, because the government wanted to stop the movement of the free Black population and keep the social order. If we think of the fact that the Black Power movement was already forming 60 years ago, it’s incredibly powerful that our siblings were taking back control of the narrative of their hair and inspired generations to come to love their own natural hair. Yet sixty years later, we are still struggling to learn how to love our hair. Do you see how much work there is to be done?
Essentially, hair has and always will be so much more than hair. The roots of our hair symbolise the roots of our culture. The battle with learning to love what we’ve been conditioned to hate. For me, it is one of the biggest and simplest forms of activism; living in a predominately white town and bopping along the street with my afro shining. If it could speak, it would scream to all those around ‘I exist despite being told not to’. My hair being healthy and in good condition is a visual reminder to myself that I now know how to look after it, and it’s healthy because I want it to be, because I love my hair and when I wear it down I want the world to notice. I want white people to see the unadulterated self-love, Black love, and I want other Black and Brown folks to see themselves reflected within the curls of my own hair. For me, there is no better feeling than when I lock eyes with another sister, her hair proud and beautiful, in whatever shape or style it may be, and within the few seconds of our gaze meeting, a lifetime of conditioning and internalised racism being let go and exchanged for- yep, you guessed it, Black Joy.
Hey Siri, play: Don’t Touch My Hair by Solange.
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