The truth about black hair

“If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed.”

There are many enduring myths about black hair. Credit: Marcela Arango.
“Your hair feels like pubic hair.” That was one of the first insults that someone hurled at my hair. She was a junior at my school. She would touch my hair and repeat this sentence to all present. I had to threaten her with violence to get her to stop touching my hair and comparing it to her pubes.
This is one of the first dilemmas that black people face: do I let people touch my hair and under what circumstances? The question “can I touch it?” becomes one of the most awkward social moments and can break relationships before they even start.
This fascination with the texture of black hair (please don’t call it “ethnic”) is not new. In slave societies, white women would often hack off the hair of their enslaved female servants because it supposedly “confused white men” .
Today, black women with nappy hair – that is, natural and chemical-free – are desirable despite the popular discourse to the contrary. Think for example of how Lupita Nyong’o has become a household name even though she is nappy and has dark skin.
It’s not just fashion or trends: throughout history, black women’s hair has fascinated artists and photographers and has been closely linked to radical political movements such as the Black Panthers and South Africa’s own Black Consciousness Movement. It then seems like a paradox for the young women at South Africa’s Pretoria Girls High School to be told that they should “discipline” their hair by relaxing it.
But it’s actually not a contradiction, since desire and fear often feed on each other. In the documentary produced and narrated by Chris Rock called “Good Hair”, the comedian Paul Mooney states it plainly: “If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they are not happy.”
This is not just clever rhyming. Mooney is pointing to the fact that nappy hair is inevitably associated with something that is out of reach for “white people”. When you sport your natural hair, you are free; your hair is wild; you have a new “hairstyle” everyday; you are radiant; you are regal. These are out of reach for most people.
It is also about conformity. By choosing not to tease and tame your hair, you are also choosing to let your hair express its personality rather than look like everyone else’s hair.
Notice that I have generalised the issue to people in general rather than writing about white people, because misconceptions about what black hair is are also propagated by black people. In fact, I would argue that most white people get the majority of their misconceptions about what black hair from black people.
A history of black hair myths
There are two main misconceptions that are urgent for understanding what the governing body and headmistress of Pretoria Girls High may have been thinking – or not.
The first is that natural hair is “dirty”. The second is about the extent to which natural hair grows – hence the obsession with hair length, extensions and dreadlocks.
Many black women and men who wear weaves and relax their hair will explain their choice by either saying that their natural hair is “unmanageable” or that natural hair is “dirty”. This is one of the most enduring stereotypes about black hair. People will even cite the “anecdotal” evidence that Bob Marley’s dreads had 47 different types of lice when he died. But these are urban legends of the worst kind because they perpetuate the stereotype that only black hair attracts lice, and other vermin, which is scientifically untrue.
Historically, the myth comes from images of the pejoratively named “fuzzy-wuzzy” that British soldiers who were fighting Sudanese insurgents in the Mahdist War sent home. This war, from 1881-1899, popularised the image of the wild Afros that people now imagine when they think of black hair.
But these images are misleading for the simple reason that they suggest these Sudanese soldiers did not “dress” their hair or wash it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Across the African continent, techniques for dressing hair were as varied as the hairstyles that they produced.
The “Afro” therefore is not some kind of standard African hairstyle. It is just one of several hundred ways of growing and maintaining curly hair. So when a black person decides to “dread” or lock their hair, they neither need nor keep “dirt” in it to make it lock. Our hair (as does all hair) locks naturally when it is left uncombed or unbrushed.
The association of locks with dirt partly comes from the Caribbean where Rastafarianism emerged as a subculture. However, even in this instance, the misconception is that dreadlocks equal Rastafarianism. The reality is that the Rastas got their locks from Africa. To be exact, matted African hair was transported to the Caribbean by images of Ethiopian soldiers who were fighting the Italian invasion which began in 1935. These fighters vowed – using the example of Samson in the bible – that they would not cut their hair until their country and emperor Ras Tafari Makonnnen (aka Haile Selassie) were liberated and the emperor returned from exile.
The myths about how long black hair can or should be are as legion as the myths that natural hair is “dirty”. The misconception partly comes out of the concept of measurement. Natural African hair is curly and so to measure it, one would have to stretch out the coils. This is why limiting the growth of the hair by the width of cornrows or length of strands doesn’t make sense at all. One black person’s coiffure will look very short because of “shrinkage” and another black person’s locks will look very long because of a loose coil.
The notion that long black hair is or should be cut or trimmed to an “acceptable” length is ignorance masquerading as “neatness”. No two black people’s hair “grows out” the same.
Whose “common sense”?
Pretoria Girls High is not the first institution to try and police black people’s hair. In an article titled “When Black Hair Is Against the Rules”, the New York Times responded to hair regulations that had been published by the US Army on 31 March 2014. These prohibited twists, “matted” hair and multiple braids – all of which were read as references to natural African hair and hairstyles.
Conservative institutions – schools, militaries, corporations and so on – have the right to prescribe a dress code. However, these should not be based on partial knowledge where these institutions simply don’t do any research into what some of their prohibitions actually mean and instead rely on “common sense”.
Because when it comes to black hair, “common sense” is the least reliable tool for decision-making, since even black people are constantly changing their minds about what they want to do with their hair. As an expression of our culture, black hair is as malleable and plastic as our ideas about it.
To attempt to fix such expressions in rules and regulations is to deny black people what the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop called our “Promethean consciousness”. As black people, our hair is an expression of the infinite possibilities that emanate from this creative and daring consciousness.
Hlonipha Mokoena is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
You might be overlooking another potential influence on Dread locks in Jamaica. “Due to deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in India under British rule, more than 36,000 Indians came to Jamaica as unskilled labourers between 1845 and 1917, mostly from North India (Rajasthan, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh), with around two-thirds remaining on the island.” They seem to have introduce ganja to the Jamaicans, matted hair and Jah. https://vimeo.com/76819259
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If you’re examining alopecia, hair damage, preventing scalp disorders, hair growth, hair health in general, the same thoughts come to mind.
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As a man whose hair naturally disappeared when I was in my mid teens, I am also naturally envious of women with such fabulous hair – whatever the style. I was victimised by others because of this, although not to anything like the extent many Black women air who lose jobs and suffer verbal abuse. But when someone with luxuriant hair complains, I cannot help but think, “At least you have hair”.
Does it work on pubic hair, I am trying for a pony tail
This doesn’t answer why did Africans or black peoples of Africa develope unusually kinky course hair on the head while other indigenous cultures did not. I don’t understand the evolutionary aspect at all, and why do black people carry lice 20 times more frequently than white of same social economic background then spread it to whites ? Is it poverty lack of self care lack of washing hair consistently or dire economic conditions? I moved to an all black neighborhood and experienced the first louse in my hair I’m going to throw up remembering it. I’m not racist but I’d never go near an all black neighborhood again I cannot take the vermin every kind of bug imaginable DEAR GOD WHY
i hate white people sit near me in the African salon cant stand it when they sit near me want a black lawer there racest people keep bringing there people in our african salon sit there and wear are blond braids why cant we wear there blond hair always come to are area touch are braids they keep putting braids on white people gets on my nerves i have loads of fans i should be able to have a makeup desghner team and hair desghner team i live in hull and want a new house cause we have a sink hole they come there touch are people come to are hairdressers can stand white people sitnear me tell channel 4 and there school leavers take the piss out of my daughter and think they can come to are hairdressers we want are hair back and my mum hasent taken me to the school play hate white people sit near me
I think some black hair looks ridiculous…. sorry it really does
White women just do this, and I’m white. Whenever I have long hair, women always grab my hair and touch it. It’s so weird. I agree.
This is the cringiest self victimizing thing i have ever seen on the internet. White people want to touch your hair because its unfamiliar. The same way africans want to touch white peoples hair when they go to africa. Get over yourself. You are not a victim because someone was mean to you
What a crazy theory. i love reading all these insane comments but lets get one thing right we we should have never ended slavery…