'Its just hair!' and other tricks.
(Two real headlines, One making fun of Ciara for having dreads.making fun of them, implying they’re ridiculous,odd an overalls decision. calling them wacky. Kylie Jenner gets a headline calling her dreads fun,creative and edgy.Her sister has been called Avante-Garde for creating box braids.)
These subtle differences in language contribute to institutionalized facets of racism in major and intricate ways. And its not new.
“Wacky” but they mean “ghetto”, “inappropriate”,“wild” for Ciara,a black woman, instead of Spiritual, whimsicle ,natural, soulful or maybe even a compliment.but “edgy”,and “fun” on Kylie.Trendsetter. There’s nothing next level about ignoring the culture a style is attributed to spiritual awakening or even ancestral unearthing. It is just a pretty hairstyle, on that Ill agree but the Kylies think they can by nigga-snap ons and build a bitch with no one batting an eye.
I dont think people recognize that aside from the variety of every kind of asshole ridiculing black hairstyles, these styles are also discriminated against within many institutions, in present day. Children and other students being suspended from school for wearing styles like dreads or box braids all over the country. Even if its for spiritual reasons. Guidelines in the military legislate against natural black hairstyles for being “unkempt”. Words like “distracting” get thrown around. (Im often told the preoccupation of my blackness or my black body is distracting and that I’m some how at fault).Then there’s being seen as unprofessional in a work environment, and the very insulting, theyre mistakingly seen as “dirty. ”Many black people ,myself included are henpecked, being touched and patted on the head without permission, then subjected to a personal assessment or unsolicited approval or disapproval. It feels like being on an apple box. This is all to perpetuate self-hate and guilt about who you are.
All of these nuanced forms of racism that tell us when a black person embraces thier own heritage and culture (in many instances, ones forged after our history and linage had been stripped away from us and purposely disposed of) it isn’t just a noted difference but its function is to keep us weak in our methodic displacement. Toted as the untamed traits that made slavery ok in the first place–The thoughts that lay the foundation for disproportionate education and career opportunities–That makes black and brown bodies the fuel in the prison-industrial complex fire. This is woven into the big cloth of bullshit we are all being fed.
But when these melanin-less, thieving, bloodsucking, soulless people jerk thier hips in between a beat on stage and tries to fake the rhythm AND the blues;the rock AND the fuckin roll– or takes songs from black artists’ and tries, in vein, to replicate the very things that gives it feeling? Studies desperately on how to be effortless.They become the KINGS?The innovators? History is constantly being revised to take away accomplishments and thereby to take away the self esteem of a community and they have done a good job.
Folks being called ignorant and uneducated, mocked and laughed at for not speaking “proper English”, but constantly having to answer why white people shouldn’t say the n-word. Or “Can you teach me how to twerk/crip walk/braid?!”,“What does “catch my fade mean,brah? “
Then Black kids made to feel as though they need to start damaging the hair that grows out of thier heads in order to seem less threatning, or more studious or what ever phantom assimilation point is being proposed today. Only to turn around, see it presented in mediocrity on a white person then praised for its edginess and creativity? For how “different” it is?! People like this only like different if its the same.
Black culture is not a style. If you didnt share in the degradation then sludging triumph of a (sub)(counter)culture then we dont have to welcome you to enjoy the fruits of our labor (which includes your labor . )
Its just hair, just clothes, just words„ just slang, just music, just tradition, just skin when you phase through it but these are the markers that have been weoponized against us globally, for centuries. And we dont get to take it off at the end of the day. That struggle is why it matters so much to us and means little to you. If nothing else these are signifiers of an experience you luckily know nothing of. I dont hate white people because of thier privilege, I hate people trying on my oppression for cool points then discarding it with very little thought. Out livelihoods are attached to these types of perceptions.People have died over these things.
That is why culture appropriation is a big deal. It has been a big deal for a very long time.
