Feline Formal Shorts

(”Race Relations 101″ isn’t exactly the title I’m looking for. Suggestions for better things to call this series would be much appreciated.)

The issues surrounding “ethnic” hair in general, and black hair specifically, come up pretty frequently in discussions about people’s experiences of race. It intersects with feminist concerns about beauty culture, hierarchies and colonial issues, and the difficulty of conveying lived experiences, to name a few issues. I’ll start with those, and work out from there.

This is going to be slanted toward the issue of black hair, both because I myself am black (well, black-Japanese, but I definitely have stereotypically black hair), and because much of what I’ve found that has focused on hair has been in that vein. If anyone has come across (or written) anything they would like to have included (particularly on the issue of asian hair, which I find least mentioned), please comment about it or otherwise let me know so that I can add it in.

White hair stories are also welcomed, but I would like to preserve this space for those that truly intersect with the issues laid out. If you have a story that you would like to share, but which does not really hit any of the major issues I lay out, please leave it in my Open Thread. If I get enough stories, I will write up a corresponding post about that over at Feline Formal Shorts.

Lived experience.

For me, hair is one of the easiest, most tangible ways to start talking about difference. I have kinky hair that I currently wear in something approximating an afro, and even though I didn’t start wearing my hair naturally until I graduated from high school, its texture and needs have always set me off as different from my peers. People ask you stupid questions: “did you stick your tongue in a light socket?” “Can you brush it?” “Is that really all your hair?” “Do you ever wash it?” … like what’s coming out of your head is something completely alien.

So… even though it feels a little silly, that’s the first thing I think about when people are talking about why “diversity based on skin color” is irrelevant. Setting aside all of the merits, all the reasons why race can’t be reduced to skin color and why those arguments are dumb… setting aside all of that, I can’t help but think of my hair. Because how can you feel like you’re all the same when people don’t even know that you use a brush just like they do?

This seems to be the core of the hair issue - our day to day lives are different because our hair is different. Things some people take as a given (that you could theoretically just toss your hair up in a ponytail without spending much time on it, for example) don’t work the same way. Our hair has consequences, it has weight, it has quirks… and it impacts our lives. That’s why it’s important, and that’s why people get bristly (forgive the word choice) when it comes up.

History, colonialism, and hierarchy

You can’t really process all the complexities of the lived experience without also appreciating the damages done by our histories of conquest and colonialism. Ask any brown person (and heck, most white people), and they can point out the “good” hair. Good hair isn’t curly (and if it is, they’re big, soft, well-defined curls, not small ‘frizzy’ ones). Good hair isn’t ethnic.

These are terms we use ourselves, terms we have internalized. My sisters have “good” hair. Unlike mine, theirs is long and curly, cascading past their shoulders in waves, neatly obeisant to gravity. My hair is nappy. Kinky. Coarse. And while I like it just fine, I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had hair like that.

It’s a complicated thing. There’s a lot of history involved. There’s colonialism (whiter is better because they came and they were in charge), class (whiter is better because it means you have the time and money to pursue that beauty ideal), and the everyday hierarchies of a place (long hair means this, short hair means that, this is what we do for ceremonies, to dress up, to express who we are).

Beauty Culture

These hierarchies that spring up, though, don’t simply have racial lines. They are, of course, also very much a part of the beauty culture that feminists engage. What does it mean as a woman to have to straighten your hair to be accepted? We cut, dye, press, perm, blow-dry, curl, weave, braid, twist, loc, scent, condition, wash, and style our hair with certain things understood. How much of your self do you have to shave away to become patriarchy approved? As a brown woman, can you ever really fit? How much of what you do is to attract a man? How much of what you do is just to avoid harassment?

The issues are the same, because we are women too. We struggle with beauty culture. We struggle to find ourselves. We struggle to be ourselves.

But the issues are also different. I listened to a white girl railing against shampoo ads one day. She said “nobody needs to shampoo twice before rinsing; it’s just a scam to get you to buy more shampoo.” She insisted that you could properly care for your hair by just rinsing it, and maybe splashing on some shampoo when it was really dirty. Conditioner was frivolous. And I thought… but what about my hair? I know those things aren’t necessary the way they’re advertised, but kinky hair has different needs from straight hair. Curves are brittle. Conditoner (or hot oil, or cholesterol, or whatever) is important to keep it from breaking.

How does expressing your cultural heritage (locs take maintenance; braids take absurd amounts of time; keeping a neatly shaved head is a constant effort, if a relatively small one) intersect with beauty culture? How do you reconcile different penalties for nonconformity?

Hair issues are necessarily intersectional issues. They overlap many of the essential beauty culture problems, but they are also their own problems. What do you do about insistence on unprocessed hair as a marker of authenticity? What do you do with the icky classist/racist undertones in the admonishments one might hear about a black girl with a weave? Different, but the same.

Ally work

So… if it’s different, but the same, how on earth do you approach that as an ally? Is it okay to talk about hair? Is it really all that important? How can I avoid putting my foot in my mouth?

Mostly, you ask. Like any other touchy subject, particularly one with which you might not be terribly familiar, the best thing is to sit back and listen, then ask questions. Being respectful and patient will get you a long way. I know that’s not very helpful right now, but it’s the most useful thing I can think of.

So that’s the overview. For the details, you’ll want to look at these links. I’d thought to sprinkle them in the above sections, but … they all bleed into each other. The issues aren’t generally separated out the way I put them up there, and this is easier. Look below for a list of things you can read to get you better acquainted with the way people blog about (and understand) hair.

Blog posts

“Good Hair Day” - Pam Spaulding

“Good Hair, Kinky Hair” - The Angry Black Woman

After all, talking about black people’s hair isn’t just a matter of finding a good style or a good dresser or a good product. It’s also about how we as black people feel about how our hair looks in its natural state and what we do based on those feelings. It’s also about how American society and culture (read: white folks) feels about what black people do with their hair. If you don’t think that black people’s hair isn’t a battleground for issues of race and culture and assimilation and bigotry, you haven’t been paying attention to the news.

“What do you call that?” - Magniloquence

It’s not just knowing you’re being looked at, it’s knowing you’re being looked at, measured against all manner of stereotypes, and weighed not just as you, not just as a black person, or a woman, or even just as a black woman, but as a person that reflects directly on your specific community, your specific family, and in greater part, on everyone who looks like you or acts like you or is affiliated with people who look and act like you ever.

It was knowing that when my grandmother worried about the way I looked, she wasn’t just measuring me against her internal aesthetic and finding me wanting, but knowing in her bones that if I didn’t look and act flawlessly, I would be disadvantaged. It was knowing that even though my aversion to certain styles smacked of internalized racism, it was also navigating the paths available to me; even if I personally rejected the coding “ghetto,” anything I did or said with that taint would carry. It was knowing that as me-my-mother’s-daughter, me-my-grandmother’s-grandchild, me-a-member-of-my-church, that every single one of my choices would be scrutinized and applied back, talked about if they weren’t right, and used.

Don Imus: Rutgers women’s basketball team ‘nappy-headed hos’ - Sheelzebub (? Link credits her, but all “I” links go to Pam’s House Blend)

This isn’t about School Daze and socio-political commentary; this is about Imus and Co. demeaning those women using a common racist denigration of hair texture — nothing more needs to be telegraphed — kinky hair=bad, ugly, animalistic, straight hair=good, attractive. And to top it off, those nappy-headed gals at Rutgers are therefore ‘hos as well. Nice.

And people wonder why so many black women have a complex about their hair, gooping it up with nasty lye relaxers, frying their scalp with hot combs? The self-loathing is so culturally ingrained, so pathological, and it’s reinforced by the messages like the ones Imus and friends are having a great laugh over. It’s toxic and ignorant.

“The politics of hair (again): school bans white girl with braids” - Pam Spaulding

Why would anyone do this? It can’t be because it’s fun or easy to maintain. Black women who wear their hair in straight styles obsess about it all the time. Don’t let it get wet, humid or exercise too hard because if you do, it will “go back” at the least opportune moment. At this point and time, the problem is two-fold:

1) an internalized self-loathing passed down through the generations of being told your natural hair is a “problem” and “fixing” it by using such extreme measures is a means to assimilate into the dominant culture (boy, that’s working real well, considering the above stories, huh?); and

2) the dominant culture still has bigoted ideas about blacks and kinky hair that can profoundly affect the employment of, and treatment of people. This of course, means #1 will continue to occur.

Articles

“Black denial” - Miami Herald

SANTO DOMINGO — Yara Matos sat still while long, shiny locks from China were fastened, bit by bit, to her coarse hair.

Not that Matos has anything against her natural curls, even though Dominicans call that pelo malo — bad hair.

But a professional Dominican woman just should not have bad hair, she said. “If you’re working in a bank, you don’t want some barrio-looking hair. Straight hair looks elegant,” the bank teller said. “It’s not that as a person of color I want to look white. I want to look pretty.”

“Boortz: Rep. McKinney “looks like a ghetto slut” - Media Matters

On the March 31 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Neal Boortz said that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) “looks like a ghetto slut.” Boortz was commenting on a March 29 incident in which McKinney allegedly struck a police officer at a Capitol Hill security checkpoint. Boortz said that McKinney’s “new hair-do” makes her look “like a ghetto slut,” like “an explosion at a Brillo pad factory,” like “Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence,” and like “a shih tzu.” McKinney is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia.

“Let’s Bury ‘Good Hair’” - Black Voices

Let’s talk about the term “good hair.”

You’ve either grown up hearing it all your life from relatives, friends and beauticians because you have “it”, or you’ve heard the opposite such as, “Your hair won’t do that because you don’t have ‘good hair.’” I am in the latter category. I can recall being seven years-old and spending the night over my cousin’s house. The next day my aunt was helping me get ready for church and while brushing my hair, said disgustedly, “You have such nappy hair, child.”

“Racial Variations” - New Hair Institute
(Discusses the different ‘types’ of hair from a more-or-less scientific standpoint. A very good base for the words people use and their real-world meanings, even if it doesn’t actually touch on the issues resulting from those differences.)

WHERE WE LIVE: East Bay hair salons grow business by catering to Latino community

Dolores Valezquez of Pittsburg talked about her job as Bertha Osoria painted chunks of her hair with a white paste, covering them with foil until the metallic strips fanned around her head like a lion’s mane.

“They are good people. We talk about work. How we have been. Mexico,” Valezquez said in Spanish.

Latinos make up most, but not all of their clientele, said Maria Gonzalez, Latino’s Hair Salon owner.

“Our hair is different than American people’s,” Gonzalez said. “We have coarse hair. For white people, it’s very easy to do highlights. For us it’s harder.”

Whew! That was pretty long. And not entirely 101. Was it helpful to any of you? Are there issues you’d like to see fleshed out a bit more? Do you have any links you think would help make this clearer? Tell me below.

[Cross-posted from my stint at Feministe.]