Black Hair

When I teach lower division Women's and Gender Studies courses, I often teach a unit on the politics of hair. Over the years, I discovered that there's actually more resistance from students to that unit than the unit on reproductive rights.

When the story about why the little boy who'd visited the White House wanted to touch the president’s hair made news, I couldn't help but be reminded of these experiences and to think back on why it was that my students, who were mostly white, were so upset by the idea that hair may have some political significance, especially in the African-American community.

Perhaps, it's because students wanted to see hair as only a personal choice. When my students—who, again, were almost exclusively white—thought about hair, they thought only about their personal choices regarding style, color, length, and so forth. For them, the idea that hair could have political significance–especially racially political significance—threw part of their deeply held belief system into question. That is, many of my students don't want to believe that race still matters in the United States. In particular, the idea that race still matters enough that even hair is part of the discussion, was very disturbing to them.

Of course, there's a long history of the importance of hair in the African-American community. Whether as a sign of solidarity during the Black Panther movement, or resistance to Westernized gender and beauty norms from a feminist perspective (such as in the poetry of Lucille Clifton), or of a new era for Black women, as suggested in an article several years ago about Michelle Obama's hair and what it meant to have a black woman with straightened hair as a 1st lady, African-American hair has been and remains a symbol, both to the community itself and to the wider nation.

Recently, as discussion of Gabby Douglas’s hair bristled in cyberspace, with African Americans and those from outside that community engaging in tense discussions about an Olympian’s hair, I was reminded of how very much is at stake in talking about hair.

For many white people, I think believing that race is still so important in the United States that it even affects our discussions of hair is simply uncomfortable. Yet, this is the discussion with which we are faced. We are faced with this discussion both because hair remains important in the African-American community and we need to understand and respect that, but we’re also faced with it because we do still have a system in place that values a certain kind of Western beauty, of which natural (or seemingly unkempt) African-American hair is not desirable and people of color, in general, are stereotyped as lazy and unkempt.

That adage, “out of the mouths of babes” is particularly apt in describing what it meant for that little boy to ask his one question to the President. With his simple question of wanting to know whether or not the president's hair felt like his, that child alerted all of us to the fact that even among very young children, there is a deep understanding that hair is important. To have someone in the White House who has hair like him, means, to this little boy and many others like him, that there is someone like him running one of the most powerful countries in the world.

I imagine this is some of what drove the comments from the African American community about Gabby Douglas’s hair. Someone who looks like them has won gold. She has become the first African American woman to win gold in the overall competition, and she deserves a tremendous amount of praise for doing so. In a world, however, where there are still far too few representations of successful Black women, she will unfortunately face a great deal of scrutiny—and not just about her hair—because she is now a representation of that community.

As a working class kid from Appalachia whose mother was always worried my white sneakers looked dingy and that people would think I was dirty because of it, I can understand why many of the comments about Douglas’s hair came from members of the African American community. In a certain sense, those of us who “make it” are supposed to be role models. When you’re from a marginalized group, whether you like it or not, you are often the representative for everyone from your group. This is part of why I still check my shoes each morning when I arrive to campus.

Let me be clear here. I'm not suggesting that there is not still an element of personal choice in what one does with one's hair. In fact, I'm suggesting that people do make choices—whether they are members of the white community, African-American community, or any other community—about their hairstyles. Those choices, however, are rooted in a deep, long history of politics surrounding people’s bodies, and the individuals making those choices can't always control how they're read and interpreted.

For anyone who's made uncomfortable by the discussion, or simply wants to believe that hair is no longer important, I hope that all he or she has to do is look at the photo of that little boy or read the threads about Gabby Douglas’s hair to understand that Black hair is, in fact, to quote Joe Biden, still “a big effin’ deal.”