Week 5. Belonging and Visibility: Racialization of Black Hair

hi guys welcome to week five of black popular culture today uh we have some very exciting content this week so without further Ado let's begin um under the theme of belonging in visibility this week we will discuss the racialization of black hair we will discuss the hyper visibility of black hair primarily black women's hair the cultural surveillance attached to it and the points of uh departure from this policing that becomes transgressive uh we have a very special guest joining us uh this week we have uh Tia maton uh who is uh an award-winning novelist and

the writer in Residence at Western join us uh we're very lucky to have her because we also have her article as a reading this week so uh it's uh especially uh special that you know she decided to um she agreed to join us and talk about her article the policing of black woman's hair her personal journey and um how her personal hair journey is also uh political okay so uh please endure to watch this video I'll try to keep my lecture as brief as possible so that you can actually do justice to uh watching her

guest lecture um we have three other readings this week we have B hookes uh straightening our hair orre Lords is your hair still political and fitzmar guys black man Sanctuary so this week we have no uh Theory or no academic reading we have these four uh reflective article pieces which are personal article pieces there's no heavy Theory so uh all of together they not even like 15 pages so yeah I hope you were able to uh uh read them this week uh to complement our readings we have uh the second episode of the show The

Hair tales on Disney plus we are watching the isar episode which is the second episode um the show is available on Disney plus however if you do not want to buy or do not have subscription to Disney plus that's completely understandable uh you can find other ways of watching this episode or you could stream it or um watch clips of it at least on YouTube so it is okay to skip the episode however I strongly recommend at least watching uh clips of it on YouTube as it is an excellent piece of uh pop culture where

they engage in a very meaningful discussion and and which also informs our uh discussion further so if you can please uh watch this episode you know this is what I uh miss about not having this course in person because we could have watched the episode together and actually like um discussed the episode or sort of dissected it or analyzed it but oh well um try to uh read the readings and watch the episode okay uh um let's begin black hair uh for centuries has been a site of cultural surveillance and sociopolitical commentary we know that

it has its roots in slavery black people's hair was used uh to point out their distinctiveness from whiteness and rendered through a dehumanizing lens so um this hair was historically a test St as wild quote unquote or deviant uh which is why it was deemed inferior when um something is oppositional to the mainstream normative culture it is often understood as abnormal or uh something which is an an normaly so whenever you know we don't understand something uh you tend to deem it as in inferior or abnormal or something that is resistive uh so owing to

this historicity uh the slavery era and the decades following it set the stage for much of the negative stereotyping and the cultural surveillance around um how black people presented themselves especially through their hair which prevails even today uh eurocentric Beauty standards have consistently portrayed black people as deviant because their hair does not fit the narrowly defined parameters of how white people Define Beauty we know that straight hair has been deemed as the conventional Norm that has been you know entrenched into something that is culturally socially uh acceptable so B hooks in her personal piece uh

straightening our hair accounts the the historical relationship of straightening black woman's hair in a way which was almost a forceful way to assimilate she writes within uh White supremist capitalist patriarchy the social and political context in which the custom of black folks straightening our hair emerges represents an imitation of the dominant white groups appearance and often indicates internalized racism self-hatred and or low self-esteem she acknowledges the internalization of the practice of regulating black folks' hair and um where she attest that black women straightening our hair quote unquote seemed more and more to be exclusively a

signifier of white supremist oppression and exploitation so it is a way way to um you know assimilate to look less deviant to look less distinctive or it was a way right historically this was the reason not anymore and hence more acceptable as it was primarily U related to a desire to succeed in the white world she says almost as a survival strategy there's something very important about how hooks reminisces her mother uh quote unquote fixing her hair so she calls straightening the act of straightening is fixing her hair um she writes on Sunday mornings we

would Gather in the kitchen to get our hair fixed that is straightened smells of burning grease and hair mingled with a sense of our freshly washed bodies with collard greens cooking on the stove with fried fish there's something very poignant about the way she remembers the fix ing of her hair as she talks about the years of abuse and Trauma that her hair went through because of the harsh uh hair pressing um she also brings to the for the intimacy that doing each other's hair forged for black women it was this exclusive moment that black

women were sharing with each other uh while fixing each other's hair physically away from whiteness yet still participating in rendering the beauty standard which deemed them acceptable in uh White supremist patriarchy so let's take a moment to pause and explore this intimacy engaging with each other's hair in Black cultures offers something that goes beyond intimacy it offers a space to be it offers a communal space for solidarity um where you are stepping out of any expectations or societal uh pressures beauty salons for women and barber shops for men uh become important sides of Escape self-indulgence

self-acceptance self-expression and communion so for black people uh beauty salons and barber shops become some very important communal resistive forces that help them um uh understand their own identity and express themselves in a way which they deem fit so um hooks writes further about the importance of this space in her article as she says the beauty paror was a space of Consciousness raising a space where back women shared life stories hardship trials gossip a place where one could be comforted and one Spirit renewed it was for some women a place of rest where one did

not need to meet the demands of children or men it was the one hour some folks would spend off their feet a soothing restful time of meditation and silence the beauty salon becomes a liberating Empower site empowering site uh despite the negative implications that connote the pressures on black hair in the second episode that we're watching of hair tals um the episode is divided into two parts it switches between isa's conversation with uh Tracy Ellis Ross and the beauty salon sequence where we witness all these women uh come together and have conversations around their hair

identity self self acceptance all through the lens of these women it is an important site of identity formation and Community not just for black women but also for black men as well uh Fitz Mari in his article conveys the relevance of Baba shops for black men by terming it the black man Sanctuary he relates this to the um German thinker habermas's theory of public sphere which is a Democratic Nexus in social life where people can come together to engage and connect with each other so um why is this Salon or Baba shop as a public

sphere so important for black folks the public Spar entails white supremist patriarchy which can often times exclude black people this is why they create a space within the public SP which is exclusive to them uh it becomes a space which is known as the counterpublic so um when you create a space within the public sphere within the public culture which becomes exclusively your space which becomes resistive in a way where it reduces your marginality it becomes a space for the counter publics so um the black barber shop or the Black Beauty Salon thus becomes a

space of this counter Publix that being said um barber shops can also become a space where black men project hyper masculinity as our guy acknowledges it is a response to a repressive Society and also a racist stereotype meant to restrict black men so um as black babashop are protected spaces uh the conversations could easily what he says wear into problematic territory with no form of accountability however it is imperative to recognize the massive cultural importance that this space beholds and that the influence that this space has on black individuals and not paint the sanctity of

the side by relegating exceptions at the center all the Artic that we'll read this week have one thing in common how black folks have internalized white standards of hair how they've how they've internalized these white um hegemonic expectations which corote anti-blackness so it became a part of um you know policing the black body the when you are actually surve uh surveiling your hair you make sure that that what you're doing is uh controlling governing or supervising someone's ex existence or their choices so one of the Supreme examples of this internalization uh where you know black

people themselves participate in this um policing is uh where we see in Audrey Lord's article um um is your hair still political as a black woman entering the Caribbean from the United States she's restricted to enter the Caribbean a black country um by a black female immigration officer who detests her choice of having her quote unquote natural hair she writes that her experience is just another example of black people being used to testify a against black people using our enemies weapons against each other um it is so important here at this moment when you read

it you will understand that this um this woman in a position of power who is the immigration officer stops uh Lord from entering the Caribbean because she does not accept the way she's wearing her hair uh the immigration off offer's hair herself is you know pressed in styled in a certain way however she does not accept or Lord's um choice of wearing her natural hair it's deviant in her eyes right so she cannot enter the country can you imagine uh she writes which is I think you know something that we have to think about on

a Caribbean Island one black woman had looked into another black woman's face and found her unacceptable what was so unacceptable about this moment what was unacceptable is that in the immigration officer's Eyes orre Lord chooses to not conform to the societal expectations right that is what was unacceptable and what happens here is that the enemy's weapons which is the the two of white supremacy is used in a way that it fits black people against each other so hooks also refers to a similar example of this internalized anti-blackness where um at a conference on black women

in leadership you know she walks into the auditorium with unprocessed hair and was met with quote unquote hostile stairs from all her fellow black women so the idea of natural hair has met with several contestations for years the historicity of it lies in um the 1960s where black people actively work towards critiquing challenging and changing white racism by Dawning their natural Hao which was then popularly known as quote unquote the afo so this was their resistance to the racist policing off their hair the celebration of their Blackness right they chose not to straighten their hair

not to process their hair and wear it the way they naturally um deemed it it was an active way to resist the oppressive strictures of white supremacy and render it to um the self-expression of their identity it was a response to the historical moment which um required black women to straighten their hair as it became actively political and transgressional to wear your natural hairstyle so in this picture we see um activist and thinker Angela Davis's natural hairstyle which was a political statement defying uh eurocentric standards of beauty for the longest time after and still today

black women find the incessant pressure to remain Afrocentric and true to their ancestry and roots what do I mean by apocentric um it's a term used to um to denote how you are using your uh African roots to express your identity so in the episode The of the hair Tales we witness is discussing these pressures of being apocentric herself being a public figure she also constantly is under uh surveillance and supervision she tells us that it is not in Afrocentric ISM but in how one chooses to wear their hair that Lies True Liberation right um

when I spoke to TAA she said uh and as you'll see she says that one fact that you cannot contest is that she's black or that her Blackness remains constant how she chooses to express it or how one chooses to express it should be their personal choice so um Issa uh here uses the term versatility to Define uh you know this this step of not being Afrocentric or just being what is true to herself and I think there is this term versality is very meaningful because it's so important right black people have mirrior experiences and

um you know they there are multiple meanings to their Blackness it is impossible to want to contain it and render it through just one lens when we expect just a monolith as one black experience we opt an essentialist approach reducing the a effect that the black experience has versus you know having a dialogic approach where we've learned it is known to understand the multiplicity of this experience right what this experience means to each individual so the power of esar show the uh hair Tales is that all these personal experience become political by entering the public

domain we have all like throughout all the episodes we're not obviously watching the other episodes but the the point of the show is that these black women in uh some sort of uh Power uh positions of power talk about their hair Journey right and their self-actualization or self-expression through their hair what that means for them uh if like Isa says and even like tonji says for them shaving their head was the way they found true Liberation how do they find meaning to their Blackness through their hair so um the reason these personal experiences become so

important is that when they enter the public domain like I said they become political there is a power in this Politics as it creates a culture of acceptance and encourages self-expression so to answer Lord's question um if your hair is still political all the viewings and the readings that we have are personal yet invariably participate in the political right because the bodies of black men and women have so often been devalued burdened and wounded as Bel hooks argues it is in celebrating our bodies she says that we participate in a liberatory struggle that frees mind

and heart this means to express their blackness in whatever way they deem accurate so I think that was all for my lecture today in my conversation with uh Toni we discussed the pressures of being Afrocentric we discussed her texture talk like I mentioned and what it means for her to be black so please make sure to engage her uh talk and I hope that you have a good time with the readings and the viewing this week thank you