‘Anti-blackness’ perpetuated in attitudes to hair – lecturer

The centuries-old practice of racializing and discriminating against black people because of their hair is still being perpetuated.

That was the view of the panelists who spoke on a webinar entitled, ‘Good Hair’ Entanglements of Race, Gender and Law in a Post-Colonial Caribbean hosted by the Faculty of Law of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.

In her presentation, Dr Daniele Bobb, a lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit at the UWI, said there was a connection between the way hair was viewed during slavery and the way it was perceived in today’s world.

“For me, this issue around black people’s hair is especially important because it becomes a center of expression of anti-blackness and systemic racism and I think that is very foremost and that is what is coming out here…I think that connection between colonial experiences and present-day experiences of black people’s hair is very pertinent to the grounding because it demonstrates the kind of power that is coming out and we know in pre-colonial societies hairstyles were very significant. It was a symbol of black people’s identity and it was very much celebrated…There is a kind of deep spiritual and cultural significance of African hairstyling,” Dr Bobb pointed out.

She said the current attitudes toward black people’s hair, especially women and girls, were both spiritually and emotionally damaging.

To make matters worse, Dr Bobb said the behaviour was being encouraged by the legal system.

“Aside from the ways in which these rules and these regulations are very much arbitrary, are very much sexist and anti-black, there is a kind of emotional and spiritually damaging effect on black people, on young girls’ bodies…

“We need to be able to move away from this anti-blackness, but it brings me to the role of the legal system. The role in the sense that the legal system is upholding these racially discriminatory practices and that people’s hair is being weaponized…In the justice system there is this kind of endorsement of the rules that penalize black cultures and black people,” Dr Bobb said.

Research fellow and course director for gender and the law in the Faculty of Law, Rashad Brathwaite observed that black people’s hair was still being policed even in populations which had a black majority. This, he said, was evidence of “colonial hangovers”.

“These discussions around ‘good hair,’ these are happening in populations where you can have a majority black population and yet the type of policing around hair is never-the-less very much present,” Brathwaite said.

Dr Jason Haynes, the Deputy Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, explained that the discrimination toward black people and their hair could even be found in sports, operating along the lengths of “colour and agenda”.

He pointed to the “soul caps” which were banned from the 2021 Olympics, even when there was no evidence to support that swimmers who wore them had an advantage.

He said the fact that they were made by black people for mainly black swimmers was telling. (RB)