Image Source: Getty Images
I’m about to make a lot of y’all BIG mad.
I’ve been in enough comment sections to know that some people will not take this well, but I’m not concerned with it anymore.
Non-black women/femmes can’t participate in the natural hair movement.
Not the hashtags. Not the t-shirts. Not the clout. None of it. Period.
Originally this topic was just about white people, but anti-blackness grows rampant in multiple communities.
Spoiler alert, if you’re a non-black person of color in a majority white country, hating us will not elevate you to majority status. And you are no more off the hook than Klanswoman Katy for disrespecting us while trying to take the beauty we’ve made from our struggles at the same time.
So what do I mean? If you didn’t immediately run to the comments section to throw a tantrum, you can find out!
It’s never “just” anything
First off, much like it’s never been ‘just hair’ when y’all grow actual mold trying to copy our locs, “natural hair” is not just a descriptive phrase.
It’s born from the choice to not chemically straighten one’s hair. And that choice is not without consequence.
People are still being fired, not hired in the first place, and even black youths are being forcibly denied opportunities to learn and grow because of their natural hair. Yes in this century. Yes, in this YEAR.
If you haven’t heard of any of the recent stories, congrats, that’s exactly why you can’t sit with us.
Image Source: Getty Images
Wearing natural hair is a choice that flies in the face of literal centuries of oppression that is still ongoing. It’s a choice non-black people do not struggle with. Therefore, the language of that struggle is not yours to use.
Non-black unaltered hair has never in history been treated with equal value as unaltered black hair, and jumping on the hashtags with some flippant “It’s just words” is ignorant and disrespectful.
“But what about when BLACKS straighten their hair?”
Stop calling us ‘blacks’, first of all.
I hear this line often, and I want to refute a common defense before I say anything else: I don’t believe that the original use of relaxers and straight weaves/wigs had anything to do with other ethnicities that have straight hair.
No, white people don’t have a monopoly on straight hair, and yes, human hair used in hairpieces comes from Parvati, not Penelope.
But for black femmes in the diaspora, straight hair means proximity to beauty defined by whiteness. I’m sure there are exceptions for multi-ethnic black people with two non-white parents, but that’s not for me to speak on.
I support choice. I can still do that while acknowledging the fact that black naturalistas straightening their hair 100% has its roots in assimilation into white standards. No pun intended, for once.
Image Source: Getty Images
“Yeah, but don’t you wear…?”
I sure do! All my wigs are textured, but only my Candy Coated Curls girl is MY texture. And I DO own a (dusty”> flat iron. The picture on my driver’s license is totally 17 year old me with a (painful!”> weave. Why? Because I’m taking assimilation and making it my own.
I throw on a wig when I feel like having impossibly pink/purple/blonde hair, and that’s that.
I can have fun stepping in and out of the boundaries because I’m privileged enough to live in a large city, with a creative profession, and coworkers who aren’t racist piles of walking garbage.
But somewhere out there, there’s an alternative universe April who wants to be taken seriously as an investment banker, and she’s not so lucky. THAT April gets mocked for her natural hair, AND mocked for wearing wigs, AND mocked for straightening it. That April can’t win no matter what she does. That’s part of the problem.
Remember, if you’re in a situation where you’re ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’, it’s not actually about your choices. It’s about those who would condemn you.
You know what else I have besides wigs?
Since we’re talking about what’s in my posession, let’s take it another step further. I’ve also got:
Oxford shirts and jeans. A name that’s an English word. A mouth that speaks no native African words except those featured in ‘The Lion King’s soundtrack. A complete lack of knowledge on where exactly in Africa my family was captured from, and what our original ethnicities were.
All that is a result of forced assimilation. Western standards have shaped so much more of my life past whether I do or don’t wear a wig somewhere, that when I do, it doesn’t matter.
My people were beaten, mutilated, starved, raped, and killed as punishment for attempting to bring their cultures with them to the Americas. The one thing that couldn’t be controlled was how we looked, so we were made to be ashamed of our features.
The natural hair movement is a rejection of that shame specifically.
Our hair is seen as violent, frivolous, cheap, and rebellious, because black people are seen as less than.
When non-black folk try on our hair on ‘for fun’ you make a mockery of the sentiments still getting us killed because a photo op is more important to you than our personhood. And when you show off your universally acceptable hair for Instagram points, you’re doing the exact same thing.
Well, I got made fun of in…
Image Source: Getty Images
Gonna stop you RIGHT there.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/portrait-of-woman-with-curly-hair-against-red-royalty-free-image/930132308
Cruel playground nicknames and family in-jokes about non-black curly hair, are certainly hurtful. But they don’t compare. At all.
Looking at things on a larger scale for other oppressed groups, can disdain for curly hair intersect with other very SERIOUS -isms, like antisemitism and antiziganism? Absolutely.
Are those -isms disgusting at best, and very literally deadly at their peaks? Most certainly.
Have those -isms resulted in chemically altering hair structure en masse? Are weaves negatively associated with non-black folks? Did a law need to be passed to halt discrimination based on the natural hair structure of any other group?
No.
Do non-black ethnicities the world over STILL have a version of n***** in their own languages, even if they never benefited directly from our enslavement or disenfranchisement?
Yes.
So stop being simple. Your little ‘gotcha’ has no power here.
Bonus thought exercise, call a non-black woman’s “extensions” a weave, and see how she reacts.
So, when are we going to talk about black prejudice?
When you write your own article!
If you’re not motivated enough to make a Medium account, do your own research, and organize your own thoughts, you don’t actually want a discussion. You want our silence. And I’m done with it.
Final thoughts…
The days of benefitting from black struggle while doing nothing to ameliorate it are OVER. The days of coddling people who insist on acting like toddlers when we say ‘This isn’t for you’ are done.
Hands off our hashtags.
Go do your own work.
What do you think of non-black people in the natural hair movement, curlfriends? Sound off in the comments, and keep it clean!
