Hair can be used as a tool to evaluate how difference in society is viewed. Even in relatively homogeneous societies have issues with hair discrimination. In 2017, around 80 percent of high schools in Osaka, Japan have asked students with non-black hair to die their hair black to conform to the cultural norm. In South Africa, students at a Pretoria high school were forced to chemically straighten their hair for having ‘untidy afros.’
Rwanda has a history of hair being used to discriminate. Before the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, teachers had lessons explaining how to tell Tutsi apart from Hutus. Teachers explained that Tutsi hair texture did not have the frizzy hair characteristic of Hutu Rwandans.
Today, all children are required to keep short haircuts in public schools. The hair cut is considered a part of the school uniform. Students keep their hair trimmed to at least 2 inches long. Hair cuts help all students look and attend school in the same way. Rwandans believe that hair can be a distraction when students compare, comb, change styles.
Hair is also required to be cut for hygienic reasons. The short cut helps reduce fungal infections which can be dangerous to other students.
Haircuts are also apart of teacher dress codes. Currently, the Rwandan Board of Education expects that teachers, particularly male teachers, keep their hair short and neat. This means no natural afros, braids, plats, or locked hairstyles. While this policy refers to anyone working in Rwandan schools, black volunteers are more affected by it than white volunteers. Rwandans have high expectations for afro-textured hair, but little to no exceptions on straight hair.
During my pre-service training, a black volunteer was given the choice of cutting his free-from locks (which took years to grow) or go home. This lead to Peace Corps changing the language on their Rwanda page to reflect the government's expectations on hair.
Our Rwandan (and some of our American) colleagues have hard a hard time understanding why hair is so important to black volunteers. I wrote this piece to help contextualize the culture of hair for black Americans.
A Brief History of Black Hair In The United States of America
Hair is internal to the identity of many Black Americans. While there are many reasons for the connection that black people in the Americas have with their hair, much of the special connection has to do with America's complex history with black hair. Most African Americans came to the United States as slaves via the transatlantic slave trade. These people were captured in battles or were kidnapped (though some were sold into slavery for debt or as punishment). The majority of the enslaved people were from Upper Guinea, including the modern countries of Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; Lower Guinea, including the southern portions of Eastern Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria; and West Central Africa, which encompassed mostly the western portions of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. In addition to languages and clothing that the enslaved people brought from Africa to the Americas, they also came with distinct and varying hairstyles.
Chattel and Chains
Enslaved people lacked the time for traditional hair-styling practices and tools (picks and combs) often causing hair to become matted or tagged. Additionally, hair was also used as a form of punishment in some plantations. While these challenges made it difficult for enslaved people to persevere traditional grooming practices, enslaved Africans in the Americas tried to persevere dignity in hair maintenance. In fact, advertisements for runaway slaves featured information about the person's hair, in addition to their name, age, skin color, and likely destination.
Slavery also caused internal divisions among black people in America. Lighter-skinned, straight-haired slaves commanded higher prices at slave auctions while darker, more kinky-haired slaves commanded lower prices. This moral and financial evaluation of slaves led to an internalized color consciousness, where blacks promoted the idea that blacks with dark skin and kinky hair are less attractive and worth less.
Integration
During the 19th Century, slavery was abolished in much of the world, including the United States in 1865. This allowed black Americans to join the mainstream society in new ways. Many black people felt pressure to fit in with mainstream white society and adjusted their hair accordingly. This led to the creations of “relaxers,” lotions or creams used by people with very curly hair which makes hair easier to straighten by chemically "relaxing" the natural curls. After Garrett Morgan’s 1905 accidental discovery of relaxers, these products soon took off in America. Madame C.J. Walker, an African American entrepreneur, helped popularize the press-and-curl style. While these productions help African Americans integrate into white American society, they also came with health risks. In addition to painful chemical burns and lasting damage to hair follicles, relaxers also cause an increase in Uterine Leiomyomata.
Say It Loud! I’m Black and I’m Proud
In the 1960s the Black Power movement developed. It emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions. During this era, there was a rise in the demand for black history courses, a greater embrace of African culture, and a spread of raw artistic expression displaying the realities of African Americans. The Black Power movement also included Black Americans to embrace natural and traditional hairstyles.
Black Hair Matters
While the Black Power movement led to a renewal in pide of black hair, that appreciation was not felt by all America. In 1971, Melba Tolliver is fired from the ABC affiliate in New York for wearing an Afro while covering Tricia Nixon’s wedding. Discrimination of black hair textures continues to be a consistent issue in America. In 2017, administrators at a high school in Massachusetts reprimanded and threatened to suspend 16-year-old twin sisters Mya and Deanna Cook for having braided hair extensions. The school banned extensions, calling the hairstyle “distracting.”
While wearing natural hairstyles remains a challenge for many Black Americans in the United States things are changing. This year, California and New York were the first states to enact laws forbidding race-based hair discrimination.
Work Cited
African American Hair History Timeline. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://thirstyroots.com/black-hair-history/discovering-our-roots-do-i-hate-my-hair.
Black Power. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2019, from https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power.
Jahangir, R. (2015, May 31). How does black hair reflect black history? Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-31438273.
Lattimore, K. (2017, July 17). When Black Hair Violates The Dress Code. Retrieved November 13, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/17/534448313/when-black-hair-violates-the-dress-code.
Mack, S. (n.d.). MelbaTolliver. Retrieved November 13, 2019, from https://www.blackenterprise.com/timeline-the-business-of-black-hair/melbatolliver-3/.
Madam C.J. Walker. (2019, September 4). Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/inventor/madam-cj-walker.
Morgan, Garret A.: Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: Case Western Reserve University. (2019, February 21). Retrieved from https://case.edu/ech/articles/m/morgan-garrett.
The capture and sale of enslaved Africans. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/africa/capture_sale.aspx.
Thornton, J., & Heywood, L. (2017, January 12). Pinpointing DNA Ancestry in Africa. Retrieved from https://www.theroot.com/pinpointing-dna-ancestry-in-africa-1790866123.
White, S. (1995, February 1). Slave Hair and African American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2211360.
Wise, L. A., Palmer, J. R., Reich, D., Cozier, Y. C., & Rosenberg, L. (2012). Hair Relaxer Use and Risk of Uterine Leiomyomata in African-American Women. American Journal of Epidemiology, 175(5), 432–440. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwr351
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