So Dreadlocks....

[calmyogi]

I have come across a dreadlock thread before but I haven't seen it in a while now.

I am curious what everyone has to say about dreadlocks, specifically on white people?

If you were in a professional setting and recieving services from someone with dreadlocks would you feel like they were less competent at their job, such as a doctor, nurse, lawyer?


I'm probably asking the wrong people though because I think most of us are kinda biased and sensitive when it comes to hair in our own ways, but this is the only place I can come and just yack about hair.... so opinions on dreads, good and bad?

[spidermom]

I like them on other people but like combing/brushing out my own hair too much to have them. I wouldn't judge a person as less competent for having dreadlocks as long as they were worn in an appropriate style for the job. For example, I'd expect a doctor to have hair up and back, not hanging all over the place.

[Anje]

My personal hangup is that on straighter hair, they take forever to look right to me. As in, I rarely like them on the straight-haired before they're 3-4 years old. (It doesn't help that many that I've seen are flat, irregular, bleached, and frequently are attached to people who think they're not supposed to wash them.)

When they're well-cared for and mature, though, I really do appreciate them.

ETA: It's worth mentioning, if you do it, that there are more and less damaging ways to do it. The consensus from what I've seen is that "twist and rip" is relatively non-damaging compared to backcombing or felting, and you don't want to use any sort of wax. Of course, if you've got very curly hair, you can pretty much just make little twists and let them lock up, which is gentler still.

ETA2: Lynnala has had a set going for about 1.5 years now, and they're looking good. :D http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=124275

[Sweets]

I love them. I've always wanted them, but I'll probably never have them. I think a nice set of well-cared for mature dreads, no matter the hair type or what the person looks like, is lovely. They fascinate me!

[picklepie]

IMO, on white people they read as culturally appropriative, no matter how they're created or cared for.

[Obsidian]

I generally dislike dreads on most white people, they just don't look right and seem messy, even when mature. My daughter who has fine waist length hair had dreads for about 10 months before she decided to pick them out, its been over a month and she still quite a few left. They didn't form right and always looks icky, even though they were clean.

I don't think they look professional at all, at least not on most whites and this might seem bad but I would judge a professional who had them.

[Nique1202]

IMO, on white people they read as culturally appropriative, no matter how they're created or cared for.

This. Aside from nearly all non-black hair types not forming healthy dreads on their own (hence all the focus on experimentation with methods, while black natural hair needs none of that) white people wearing dreadlocks is pretty much always appropriative because white people will face no or significantly less discrimination for dreadlocks, while black people wearing dreads or natural hair are consistently discriminated against in all kinds of workplaces here in North America.

Personally, I'd have no problems with black people wearing dreads anywhere, especially since they often are styled really nicely and appropriately for the work they're doing and they wash and care for them appropriately (they work twice as hard at it because they're likely to face discrimination) but white people wearing dreads... even aside from the appropriation, too often when you start to unravel them or cut them open they're filled with mold and god-knows-what anyway because the hair isn't suited to it and they don't or can't care for them properly, which makes me worry about health and safety in any context.

[bunneh.]

Dreads on other people for me are alright I guess... I myself would never have them... It's like a recipe for ruining your own hair imho... You can't comb them, you can't brush them you can't do anything with them. :/

[Estrid]

I think it looks nice, I would never have them myself, but I think it looks cool on others.

The black vs white thing I know nothing of, I have only seen white people irl with dreadlocks (probably because there are not many black people around here). If I google images of dreadlocks I can say that, to me, it looks good on everyone x)

I would definitely not think people with dreadlocks = less competent. That just sound strange to me. Since it is quite obvious that they've done something to their hair (that looks like it takes some to care of, not sure if it does, but yeah) I always seem to assume that they're generally good people (I don't know why I make that correlation, so don't ask).


/Margo

[Zesty]

IMO, on white people they read as culturally appropriative, no matter how they're created or cared for.

I agree with this also. I thought this video did a good job with the issue (plus I love her):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KJRRSB_XA

[chen bao jun]

Black people's hair does NOT naturally form dreads.

I don't know why there is this misconception, possibly because Bob Marley is black and the Rastafarians and they first brought dreadlocks to the attention of the public in recent tmes.

black people go to a lot of trouble with this hairstyle, often go to a hairdresser regularly for the upkeep (as the growth comes in, making it dread also), some use products in it, all need advice, there is nothing 'natural' about it. If a person never ever combs or detangles their hair, they will get some pieces of dreading, no matter what hairtype they have, which is not the same as having a dreadlock hairstyle--there have been white societies that valued this look before (google the infamous 'Polish plait'). Dreadlocks are a hairstyle that you decide to have, in short, that you work at keeping up, even if they are 'freeform' dreadlocks.

there is a black member on here, Unicorn, who has grown long hair in small sized dreadlocks, she has an album I believe, showing the stages and the many years that she worked on this, it is very informative and educational.

There are members of the black American community who feel they 'own' the dreadlock hairstyle for some reason, I must say and they are very vocal and often in print; they are part of the crowd who goes on about 'cultural appropriation' and such nonsense. This is ********. Excuse my language. Even if dreadlocks were what grew naturally out of most black people's head (not) if a white person admired them and wanted them, why not? Plenty of black people imitate Caucasian hair, even to the extent of buying blonde or brown hair extensions and PUTTING a Caucasian hairtype on their head. This is not different. Not intrinsically. Not if you honestly feel all people are equal. Of course it is if you are going to into singing that sad old song where white people owe black people forever and ever for 'slavery and oppression' (violins) and thus everything black people do is always okay and everything white people do is always wrong. An incredibly boring song, in my opinion which hurts black people more than white people; as anyone who ever raised children knows, anytime you give a human being a free pass to do what they feel like and blame it on circumstances, 'history' or worst of all, someone else, there is going to be trouble--mostly for that person.

So wear your hair whatever way you like and find attractive on you.

Personally, I don't like the look of dreadlocks at all on either black or white people, with some exceptions (Unicorn's being an exception) and there are plenty of people like me, but its not about that, either It's about what YOU want and like. It will take research and perseverance, which it does for everybody, but that's a good thing. Character forming.

Can you tell I'm all about character?

[Zesty]

I was hoping you would chime in, chen.



<snip> There are members of the black American community who feel they 'own' the dreadlock hairstyle for some reason, I must say and they are very vocal and often in print; they are part of the crowd who goes on about 'cultural appropriation' and such nonsense. This is ********. Excuse my language. <snip>

I think in my milieu those are definitely the loudest voices, which is probably why my first reaction was also "appropriation." Though I tend not to get involved in those conversations generally because I try to be non-confrontational...

And now back to your regularly scheduled (hair-related) programming.

[Hairkay]

My sis has dreadlocks and I think hers look fantastic.

[calmyogi]

Black people's hair does NOT naturally form dreads.

I don't know why there is this misconception, possibly because Bob Marley is black and the Rastafarians and they first brought dreadlocks to the attention of the public in recent tmes.

black people go to a lot of trouble with this hairstyle, often go to a hairdresser regularly for the upkeep (as the growth comes in, making it dread also), some use products in it, all need advice, there is nothing 'natural' about it. If a person never ever combs or detangles their hair, they will get some pieces of dreading, no matter what hairtype they have, which is not the same as having a dreadlock hairstyle--there have been white societies that valued this look before (google the infamous 'Polish plait'). Dreadlocks are a hairstyle that you decide to have, in short, that you work at keeping up, even if they are 'freeform' dreadlocks.

there is a black member on here, Unicorn, who has grown long hair in small sized dreadlocks, she has an album I believe, showing the stages and the many years that she worked on this, it is very informative and educational.

There are members of the black American community who feel they 'own' the dreadlock hairstyle for some reason, I must say and they are very vocal and often in print; they are part of the crowd who goes on about 'cultural appropriation' and such nonsense. This is ********. Excuse my language. Even if dreadlocks were what grew naturally out of most black people's head (not) if a white person admired them and wanted them, why not? Plenty of black people imitate Caucasian hair, even to the extent of buying blonde or brown hair extensions and PUTTING a Caucasian hairtype on their head. This is not different. Not intrinsically. Not if you honestly feel all people are equal. Of course it is if you are going to into singing that sad old song where white people owe black people forever and ever for 'slavery and oppression' (violins) and thus everything black people do is always okay and everything white people do is always wrong. An incredibly boring song, in my opinion which hurts black people more than white people; as anyone who ever raised children knows, anytime you give a human being a free pass to do what they feel like and blame it on circumstances, 'history' or worst of all, someone else, there is going to be trouble--mostly for that person.

So wear your hair whatever way you like and find attractive on you.

Personally, I don't like the look of dreadlocks at all on either black or white people, with some exceptions (Unicorn's being an exception) and there are plenty of people like me, but its not about that, either It's about what YOU want and like. It will take research and perseverance, which it does for everybody, but that's a good thing. Character forming.

Can you tell I'm all about character?

What you just said about dreadlocks is EXACTLY how I feel. I don't understand how one race can claim them because they are just an example of hair not being combed, or purposely being formed into them. I have tossed the idea back and forth in my head about starting them but my husband is very afraid it could affect my career options in the future. I have various reasons I would want them, the biggest being I'm cheap and lazy and don't like the upkeep of trims and worrying about mechanical damage to my hair, but I also don't want to have short hair either. I also think they look kinda earthy and show a detachment to worrying about your looks, without, again, having to shave your head.

I believe the rastas only started it so they could single themselves out because they thought of themselves as the "dreaded" humans... or something, i'm not sure if my interpretation is completley correct. They did it to make other races turn their heads, not because their hair did it naturally.

Edit: When I say lazy I don't mean that I don't want to fuss with my hair at all, I just don't like putting money into styling and cutting it, why not let it do what it wants is my philosophy.

[calmyogi]

I love everyone's responses! Thank you for stopping in and leaving some input. :)

[spidermom]

That cultural appropriation b.s. gives me a headache! I will pay no attention.

[Parisian Dozen]

Black people's hair does NOT naturally form dreads.



Nailed it. I couldn't have put any of what you said better.

[meteor]

Yes, about the culture thing, I'm pretty sure that none of my braids, buns, updos, half-ups, braid-outs... originated in my cultures either, and I'm totally cool with wearing what I love and I think others should feel free to wear what they love, too! ;)

I really like the look of dreadlocks, either loose or in ponytails, buns, braids... And I love how youthful and unisex they look (at least, to me they do). For me, personally, I find it to be one of those styles that I'd like to try but it would probably be very labor-intensive and the ultimate cost would be too high (meaning: I'm not sure I'd ever be able to undo them!), so I just admire them on others. :) Other styles like that for me are pixies, perms and multi-colored hair/color-melts - it would take too many salon visits to maintain and way too long for me to grow out, so I just admire these gorgeous styles on others. :crush:

Calmyogi, if you want to try it, I'd say, first research all you can about different styles of dreadlocks and the most hair-safe ways to do it, the maintenance and the products... Best of luck! :cheer:

[Hurven]

I love dreads and I would get them myself if it were socially acceptable were I live. I myself would never judge someone with dreads or think they are less competent.

[Anje]

I've got my own ideas about cultural appropriation (I figure this is something that humans generally do, to one extent or another, when they see something that another group does that they like), but... well, I'm in a majority group, so the dynamic is generally toward assimilation on this end. I have no idea how I'd feel if I were in a group that had something meaningful and unique from my group being taken up by others as fashionable.

[lapushka]

To me, dreads is the least favorite way to wear hair. Just MO and how I feel. It can look nice and groomed and pretty, but not in most cases, I feel.

[chen bao jun]

Calmyogi, enjoy your hair, enjoy your dreadlocks, if you go that way, if you do please post pictures.

Always interesting dialoguing with you guys whether on hair or OT (where I go far too often).

Just wanted to say to Anje that in my opinion, this is how people with agendas get to you? they convince you that you don't have a right to a opinion on some subject (can be anything really) because you can't possibly 'really understand' for some reason or other. Usually some reason that makes no sense, if you look at it logically, not emotionally. Usually its a guilt trip of some kind or other. Guilt is not the same thing as compassion; don't ever let anyone convince you that you are not a compassionate person if you refuse to feel guilty when they pull the puppet strings. If that makes sense.

I don't think we can ever understand ANY other human being completely, but on the other hand, we can understand quite a lot if we always think first, that's a human and I'm another one and that's the key, important fact--all the rest, in my experience, is mostly noise and static.

[Anje]

Just wanted to say to Anje that in my opinion, this is how people with agendas get to you? they convince you that you don't have a right to a opinion on some subject (can be anything really) because you can't possibly 'really understand' for some reason or other. Usually some reason that makes no sense, if you look at it logically, not emotionally. Usually its a guilt trip of some kind or other. Guilt is not the same thing as compassion.

I don't think we can ever understand ANY other human being completely, but on the other hand, we can understand quite a lot if we always think first, that's a human and I'm another one and that's the key, important fact--all the rest, in my experience, is mostly noise and static.

It might be. I'll grant you that there are people who try to manipulate others by playing to their compassion, but I can also see where (random example) taking someone's religious ceremonial traditions and wearing them because I think they're pretty might be hurtful.

ETA: Where is the line? That's what I don't really know. Probably somewhere between doing yoga for health benefits and dressing your football mascot in Sioux regalia.

[calmyogi]

Calmyogi, enjoy your hair, enjoy your dreadlocks, if you go that way, if you do please post pictures.

Always interesting dialoguing with you guys whether on hair or OT (where I go far too often).

Just wanted to say to Anje that in my opinion, this is how people with agendas get to you? they convince you that you don't have a right to a opinion on some subject (can be anything really) because you can't possibly 'really understand' for some reason or other. Usually some reason that makes no sense, if you look at it logically, not emotionally. Usually its a guilt trip of some kind or other. Guilt is not the same thing as compassion; don't ever let anyone convince you that you are not a compassionate person if you refuse to feel guilty when they pull the puppet strings. If that makes sense.

I don't think we can ever understand ANY other human being completely, but on the other hand, we can understand quite a lot if we always think first, that's a human and I'm another one and that's the key, important fact--all the rest, in my experience, is mostly noise and static.
Thank you, atm I am probably not going to do them. I do admire them when they are well kept though. I'm just not sure I want to commit to them at this point in my life. I should probably just enjoy my long hair for now since it's finally "long" at BSL now lol.

[calmyogi]

Yes, about the culture thing, I'm pretty sure that none of my braids, buns, updos, half-ups, braid-outs... originated in my cultures either, and I'm totally cool with wearing what I love and I think others should feel free to wear what they love, too! ;)

I really like the look of dreadlocks, either loose or in ponytails, buns, braids... And I love how youthful and unisex they look (at least, to me they do). For me, personally, I find it to be one of those styles that I'd like to try but it would probably be very labor-intensive and the ultimate cost would be too high (meaning: I'm not sure I'd ever be able to undo them!), so I just admire them on others. :) Other styles like that for me are pixies, perms and multi-colored hair/color-melts - it would take too many salon visits to maintain and way too long for me to grow out, so I just admire these gorgeous styles on others. :crush:

Calmyogi, if you want to try it, I'd say, first research all you can about different styles of dreadlocks and the most hair-safe ways to do it, the maintenance and the products... Best of luck! :cheer:
So true, cultures are so diverse now it's hard to know where some styles even originated from in the first place sometimes.

[Obsidian]

I should probably just enjoy my long hair for now since it's finally "long" at BSL now lol.

Keep in mind that BSL would make really short dreads. My daughter had waist length hair and her dreads at 10 months didn't even touch her shoulders.

[truepeacenik]

I had a cluster. I was Ina job that required I look professional, so a cluster of seven to nine pencil thick dreads was workable.
I could braid them into the rest of my hair for the bigwig meetings.

I'd do it again,except I am too vain about my length.
My thin dreadlets ate almost half the length.
And in removing, I only got half of them loosened enough to preserve length.

[omega]

I vote YES!

[Knifegill]

The idea of cultural appropriation is a form of racism. For people of any origin to tell another people what they can or cannot do, that is the very definition of racism.

[luxurioushair]

Black people's hair does NOT naturally form dreads.


Um, yours may not, but mine most certainly will if I don't actively prevent it from doing so. Forming dreads would be extremely easy for me. I'd just have to plait my hair and neglect it for maybe a couple of months (by neglect I mean, wash it but stop moisturizing it + removing shed hairs). If am not actively moisturizing it and removing shed hairs, it will begin to fuse very easily.

On the other hand, just by moisturizing my hair and removing shed hairs, I can leave it in plaits for as long as I like, and it preserves itself very well. It's extremely convenient. You might know that my type of hair is not meant to be combed too often, because it is very fragile and so breaks easily.

I think people just don't realize what a vast difference there is between different types of African hair.

[luxurioushair]

The idea of cultural appropriation is a form of racism. For people of any origin to tell another people what they can or cannot do, that is the very definition of racism.
Nobody is preventing anyone from taking others' religious and cultural practices, and turning them into "style". People do this all the time, they even do it to Native American Indians, (because those folks haven't suffered enough apparently). Everyone doing it, doesn't make it any less offensive. And yes, dreadlocks are deeply religious, whether people know this or not, and I am not even talking about Rastafarianism, which is a fairly new syncretic religion followed by people in the diaspora.

Do you really think that just because African Americans ask White Americans to stop dreadlocking their hair, that means they will stop? They can wear it if they want. Simply asking someone to stop doing something is not racism; they are obviously just pleading (perhaps in vain!) to be able to "keep" something as their own. Which is understandable when you look at the history of African Americans. Not that I can ever fully understand how African Americans feel, but I try to.

The reason I dislike dreadlocks regardless of their appearance, is their meaning, which I strongly believe in, being an African. In West Africa it is well known that only those who are taken over with the spirits of the gods, would wear dreadlocks. It is not something that regular people just get up and do - people are supposed to be moved to do it by the ancestral gods. But then outsiders see the hairstyle and copy it, without realizing that only shamaans and such spiritual people originally wore it. It's just like in India; only devout priests will wear dreadlocks, and they wear them for a reason.

Whether Westerners believe in the gods of West Africa or India, is beside the point. Imitating what you don't understand, and then calling it "style", is ridiculous at best.

[lilin]

I have come across a dreadlock thread before but I haven't seen it in a while now.

I am curious what everyone has to say about dreadlocks, specifically on white people?

If you were in a professional setting and recieving services from someone with dreadlocks would you feel like they were less competent at their job, such as a doctor, nurse, lawyer?


I'm probably asking the wrong people though because I think most of us are kinda biased and sensitive when it comes to hair in our own ways, but this is the only place I can come and just yack about hair.... so opinions on dreads, good and bad?

I'm a fan. :) I know some damn bright people with dreads, and writing someone off over them is pretty ridiculous, I think. However, with that said, there will be people who do. So, consider the impact that will have on you.

What makes dreads look nice to me is exactly the same thing that makes un-dreaded hair look nice to me: being clean and cared for. You know great dreads when you see 'em, and you know "neglect dreads" when you see 'em.

[Baby]

Nobody is preventing anyone from taking others' religious and cultural practices, and turning them into "style". People do this all the time, they even do it to Native American Indians, (because those folks haven't suffered enough apparently). Everyone doing it, doesn't make it any less offensive. And yes, dreadlocks are deeply religious, whether people know this or not, and I am not even talking about Rastafarianism, which is a fairly new syncretic religion followed by people in the diaspora.

Do you really think that just because African Americans ask White Americans to stop dreadlocking their hair, that means they will stop? They can wear it if they want. Simply asking someone to stop doing something is not racism; they are obviously just pleading (perhaps in vain!) to be able to "keep" something as their own. Which is understandable when you look at the history of African Americans. Not that I can ever fully understand how African Americans feel, but I try to.

The reason I dislike dreadlocks regardless of their appearance, is their meaning, which I strongly believe in, being an African. In West Africa it is well known that only those who are taken over with the spirits of the gods, would wear dreadlocks. It is not something that regular people just get up and do - people are supposed to be moved to do it by the ancestral gods. But then outsiders see the hairstyle and copy it, without realizing that only shamaans and such spiritual people originally wore it. It's just like in India; only devout priests will wear dreadlocks, and they wear them for a reason.

Whether Westerners believe in the gods of West Africa or India, is beside the point. Imitating what you don't understand, and then calling it "style", is ridiculous at best.

YES! Taking an artifact such as dreadlocks out of its cultural context and applying it in a different context with different meaning to it IS cultural appropriation, that is the defenition of the word.
I am very ambivalent about it since I do not think that appropriation is a good thing, but having monopoly on a specific symbol or artifact is also a bit wierd to me. But then again I am also thinking that nothing has an actual inhrent mening, that we just play pretend. But at the same time I can understand that one wants to keep things in a sertain way to enforse the meaning of it. And I dont think that people should be disrespectful about it.

As you see my thoughts as in a tangle about this.
I think dreads look cool on white women aswell or even sweet worn with bangs though I do get some connotations to it like "(white)people wearing dreads smoke weed and/or are vegans/feminists/lefties"(not necessarily bad things but some might think so). But then I do live in europe and I think it can be different overseas.

[Colochita]

I am another black person whose hair will naturally form dreadlocks if I don't detangle or comb it.

That said, it will definitely come across as cultural appropriation no matter how much you will it not to be. If you are lily white with dreadlocks, people, black people included, will judge you. That's just how things are. And, yes, I will probably judge you too.

I have never seen dreads that I liked on a person with straight hair because of all the back combing and not-washing that those people I've seen have had to do (or have felt they had to do) to get them to form. They've just always looked damaged and gross. I've seen pictures of straight-hair dreads cut in half with collections of mold inside them.

But what I have seen is those same people assume my black friends with dreads don't wash their hair or are in general nasty. They cut off their moldy dreads, grow straight hair, and then judge from their experience - which they now view as global.

None of this has to affect what you do with your hair. It is your hair after all.

[TR]

Nobody is preventing anyone from taking others' religious and cultural practices, and turning them into "style". People do this all the time, they even do it to Native American Indians, (because those folks haven't suffered enough apparently). Everyone doing it, doesn't make it any less offensive. And yes, dreadlocks are deeply religious, whether people know this or not, and I am not even talking about Rastafarianism, which is a fairly new syncretic religion followed by people in the diaspora.

Do you really think that just because African Americans ask White Americans to stop dreadlocking their hair, that means they will stop? They can wear it if they want. Simply asking someone to stop doing something is not racism; they are obviously just pleading (perhaps in vain!) to be able to "keep" something as their own. Which is understandable when you look at the history of African Americans. Not that I can ever fully understand how African Americans feel, but I try to.

The reason I dislike dreadlocks regardless of their appearance, is their meaning, which I strongly believe in, being an African. In West Africa it is well known that only those who are taken over with the spirits of the gods, would wear dreadlocks. It is not something that regular people just get up and do - people are supposed to be moved to do it by the ancestral gods. But then outsiders see the hairstyle and copy it, without realizing that only shamaans and such spiritual people originally wore it. It's just like in India; only devout priests will wear dreadlocks, and they wear them for a reason.

Whether Westerners believe in the gods of West Africa or India, is beside the point. Imitating what you don't understand, and then calling it "style", is ridiculous at best.

So are you saying that dreadlocks should never be worn casually by people of any race? Your comments imply that because of the religious origins of the hairstyle, people should not wear dreadlocks unless they are doing so in what you consider to be the proper religious context. The problem is that dreadlocks have become a relatively common casually used hairstyle among blacks who are clearly not shamans, at least in North America. Even when I lived in Nigeria I saw some Nigerians -again, clearly not shamans- wearing dreadlocks like any other style. Dreadlocks were less common than other styles but still were definitely present. If African Americans and even West Africans are wearing dreadlocks casually, either not knowing or not caring about the style's origin, why is it any more "appropriative" if a white person does it?

[TR]

I think it's easier for dreadlocks to look unkempt and untidy, especially when the wearer has a hair type that doesn't easily form dreadlocks. I do think clean, tidy, uniform dreadlocks look nice, but depending how conservative the business is it might be difficult to fit in with the professional environment.

[chen bao jun]

Let's have world without cultural appropriation.

Italians give the spaghetti back to the Chinese (big cultural appropriator, that Marco Polo) and definitely stop making tomato sauce. Tomatoes are in their cultural context only in the Americas. Speaking of which, let the Irish stop pretending potatoes are a national dish there. They are also from the Americas. Only got to Europe because of that terrible villain, Christopher Columbus.

Washington D.C. --all of the central buildings must be ripped down. They are culturally appropriated from Greece--all those columns and pediments and so forth. Come to think of it, the Greeks culturally appropriated columns and a lot of their architecture from the Egyptians. Nobody should be allowed to hold buildings up with those things outside of Africa anymore. And oh my goodness, these ancient peoples used them in temples--they had a RELIGIOUS meaning, very important to those peoples. And we are using them for just regular buildings, that must stop.

How dare we ride around in cars? Or on bicycles? Wheels came from the ancient Middle East, Mesopotamia specifically--that's in modern Iraq. Take the wheels off the cars!! And speaking of other things that came ultimately from there--wow, too many to list in a readable length post. Give the Iraqis back their culture!! Let's all find caves to live in and animal skins to wear, rather than rip off these people--think how they must feel to see the whole world appropriating so much from their Mesopotamian culture and not giving them any credit at all!!

Get the idea? This is why the whole idea of cultural appropriation is utterly and completely ridiculous. We would literally all be in a cave, hunting and gathering, if everybody had not borrowed freely from certain ancient cultures--and then adapted the borrowings to suit their climate, the way their hair grew, their own ideas. No people has a lock on the spread of cultural ideas, foodways, music, and yes, fashion, to all over the globe where people WILL use it any way it suits them.

Speaking of which, find me some group of people somewhere that hasn't ever been 'oppressed'. Tell me what people haven't EVER been enslaved by somebody or the other. Who hasn't been conquered, slaughtered, victimized etc. etc? And then, find me a group of people who haven't ever DONE this to somebody else? Go on, find me one. Even on little islands in the Pacific where there are two groups of people that outsiders couldn't tell one of them from the other, they make war on each other with slingshots and stone knives and bully and put down each other.

If you think you are from the only group of people who has ever been oppressed, or that your group of people has been specially oppressed more than anyone else in the world, ever, and for longer, you need to get out more. Do some more reading definitely, outside of your college textbooks in your 'ethnic studies' classes. And anyway, even if you were, why would having been 'oppressed' give you a special right to dictate to any body else?

And as for being sensitive to other people's religions, why is it that when 'artists' and filmmakers and singers, etc. deliberately and openly trash Jesus and the Virgin Mary and things sacred to Christians, you don't hear a thing about being sensitive but instead a lot about how brave the artist was and how significant the work was and how we all ought to strive to understand it and be open-minded? And the artist gets all kinds of awards and praises? Chris Ofili, Andres Serrano, people like that, why isn't someone ever telling them to be culturally sensitive?

Of course no one means that people should go around deliberately insulting other people or that because this concept is now so misused, there are no people being mistreated or abused any more, anywhere that we need to pay attention to. But unfortunately, when people are actually currently suffering to a horrific extent (the Chaldeans for instance)they are not in a position to get out and talk about it and complain and are at mercy of the news media bothering to report about them, which doesn't always happen. Maybe because the news media is too busy giving lots and lots of space to people who are well fed and well clothed in the United States complaining that their feelings have been hurt. Again. And again and again.

This will be my last post on the subject because I think I am coming perilously close to straying into politics, which is not my intention--in the US at least, its very difficult for any politician of either of the major political parties to ignore the complaining of their constituents and all the myriad special interest groups and they all spend way too much time placating people and trying to phrase things in the exact right way so that nobody's feelings will get hurt--fiddling, in my opinion, while Rome burns.

[meteor]

Forming dreads would be extremely easy for me. I'd just have to plait my hair and neglect it for maybe a couple of months (by neglect I mean, wash it but stop moisturizing it + removing shed hairs). If am not actively moisturizing it and removing shed hairs, it will begin to fuse very easily.

On the other hand, just by moisturizing my hair and removing shed hairs, I can leave it in plaits for as long as I like, and it preserves itself very well. It's extremely convenient. You might know that my type of hair is not meant to be combed too often, because it is very fragile and so breaks easily.

^ This makes a lot of sense and is quite interesting. :)
I was wondering: how does one moisturize and remove shed hairs from braids without having to unbraid them first? I'd love to be able to do that when my accent braids are way too complex to redo frequently, but my hair can mat up very quickly if I don't redo them soon.

I think braids are a great protective style specifically for keeping tangles out ... and yet, interestingly, braids are also used as a basis for locking hair, hmm... :hmm:

[Estrid]

Thank you for saying all of that, chen. I wanted to do it myself, but the way this topic went down made me so so tired, so I am very happy that someone else said it.

I don't understand people that try to keep something "within their group", or judging someone for taking inspiration from a group that doesn't look or live a life like that person. Like... why do people care? That is how humans are, that is how we got to this place to start with. I just don't get it.


/Margo

[Hairkay]

^ This makes a lot of sense and is quite interesting. :)
I was wondering: how does one moisturize and remove shed hairs from braids without having to unbraid them first? I'd love to be able to do that when my accent braids are way too complex to redo frequently, but my hair can mat up very quickly if I don't redo them soon.

I think braids are a great protective style specifically for keeping tangles out ... and yet, interestingly, braids are also used as a basis for locking hair, hmm... :hmm:

I moisturize my plaits daily (shower/bath water rinse/ water dampening) and seal with some oil. Sometimes they'll be a few hairs at the ends that are much longer than all the rest. That's shed hairs trying to work their way out. I tug them a little to see if they'll move. If they do then I slowly and gently pull them out. What's strange is that sometimes I can see it's a shed hair because some how the hair strand turned to show the white root sticking out. I still can't work out how that happens. I get 3 or 4 of those sticking out shed hairs a week. The rest gets removed once a week when I detangle my hair.

[Robi-Bird]

Thanks Chen. I think political correctness can go mad.

I'm not sure how my Scots Irish and German ancestors wore their hair but I doubt it was with forks or sticks and I am not giving those up.

[meteor]

I moisturize my plaits daily (shower/bath water rinse/ water dampening) and seal with some oil. Sometimes they'll be a few hairs at the ends that are much longer than all the rest. That's shed hairs trying to work their way out. I tug them a little to see if they'll move. If they do then I slowly and gently pull them out. What's strange is that sometimes I can see it's a shed hair because some how the hair strand turned to show the white root sticking out. I still can't work out how that happens. I get 3 or 4 of those sticking out shed hairs a week. The rest gets removed once a week when I detangle my hair.

Thanks a lot, Hairkay! :flowers:

I try to pull out those much longer strands at the bottom, too :agree:, but I must admit, it gets harder and harder to pull out those strands now (maybe due to growing length?), because they are braided into more intersections? :hmm:
I will absolutely try your oiling and moisturizing tips. Sounds great and very helpful! :thumbsup:

Oh and about the root bulbs migrating to the hemline question... Yes, it happens to me all the time, too. I'm sure it's normal. I wonder if it's because when we groom hair, it gets stuck in the comb/fingers/brush, but when you make the next stroke some of them get moved back again, but upside down this time? Maybe combs catch hair, forming a "loop" sometimes while dragging the shed strand down... I feel like it's the combination of gravity and combing & handling always vertically, straight down, and the hair might fold over and stay (due to water, oil, braid, twist etc) in our hair for a while before being removed entirely?

ETA: Or do you mean the bulbs that stick out from inside the braid? :) I see that sometimes too, but usually above the first braiding intersections, maybe because the strand has shed but is trapped there... :hmm: But I'm not sure how they migrate down the braid... that's quite a mystery... Maybe they were there the whole time (not removed during previous detangling), but didn't get revealed until the braiding pattern exposed them?:hmm:

[luxurioushair]

Thank you for saying all of that, chen. I wanted to do it myself, but the way this topic went down made me so so tired, so I am very happy that someone else said it.

I don't understand people that try to keep something "within their group", or judging someone for taking inspiration from a group that doesn't look or live a life like that person. Like... why do people care? That is how humans are, that is how we got to this place to start with. I just don't get it.
/Margo
To both you and Chen. I think I mentioned this, but African Americans, considering their history, would be very sensitive about people taking anything cultural away from them. What seems like no big deal to you, might feel like the world to them, and to ignore their feelings is harsh. Remember that at this point, most African Americans do not have their original names, or language, many do not know which country they are from originally, they don't know what religion their ancestors had. Most of them have European names, for heaven's sake. Imagine living like that. I personally can't imagine how I'd feel if I had to put up with it, I like knowing my own culture and where I'm from. So, some compassion is in order if you are not one of those African Americans who complain about this stuff all the time. Why is it okay to discount what they are saying just because you don't know what it's like to live like them?

You don't understand, because you can proudly have your Danish username, and you think nothing of how privileged you are compared to others who wish they could have their own culture back.


Thanks Chen. I think political correctness can go mad.

I'm not sure how my Scots Irish and German ancestors wore their hair but I doubt it was with forks or sticks and I am not giving those up.

The irony of this statement is astonishing. You actually know where your ancestors are from. What about African-Americans who complain about cultural appropriation? Do they have the privilege of saying "My ancestors from so-and-so country"?? No, most of them don't. The question is, why don't they? Why are most of them unable to find out?

Should it surprise anyone if some African Americans want to hold on to whatever they can? What would you do, if you were in their situation? Can you even imagine yourself in the same situation? Not even knowing which country you, your parents, your grandparents etc came from?

[Estrid]

To both you and Chen. I think I mentioned this, but African Americans, considering their history, would be very sensitive about people taking anything cultural away from them. What seems like no big deal to you, might feel like the world to them, and to ignore their feelings is harsh. Remember that at this point, most African Americans do not have their original names, or language, many do not know which country they are from originally, they don't know what religion their ancestors had. Most of them have European names, for heaven's sake. Imagine living like that. I personally can't imagine how I'd feel if I had to put up with it, I like knowing my own culture and where I'm from. So, some compassion is in order if you are not one of those African Americans who complain about this stuff all the time. Why is it okay to discount what they are saying just because you don't know what it's like to live like them?

You don't understand, because you can proudly have your Danish username, and you think nothing of how privileged you are compared to others who wish they could have their own culture back.

This was also a reason I did not feel like writing all that chen did, I knew I would get comments. I'm not sure how to reply to this nicely because I don't get this kind of sensitivity at all. History... well, a lot of bad sh!t has happened in about every country in the world, humans have been horrible to humans during all times. I just don't get why someone would be upset over someone liking someones hairstyle and then wanting it themselves. That, to me, is absurd.
People need to realize that we're all humans and not just races and ethnicities. If we keep separating ourselves into a bunch of different people no one will ever feel equal.

Guess I will leave it at "I still don't get it".

/Margo

[Kimberly]

I blame elves. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_plait

[Robi-Bird]

To both you and Chen. I think I mentioned this, but African Americans, considering their history, would be very sensitive about people taking anything cultural away from them. What seems like no big deal to you, might feel like the world to them, and to ignore their feelings is harsh. Remember that at this point, most African Americans do not have their original names, or language, many do not know which country they are from originally, they don't know what religion their ancestors had. Most of them have European names, for heaven's sake. Imagine living like that. I personally can't imagine how I'd feel if I had to put up with it, I like knowing my own culture and where I'm from. So, some compassion is in order if you are not one of those African Americans who complain about this stuff all the time. Why is it okay to discount what they are saying just because you don't know what it's like to live like them?

You don't understand, because you can proudly have your Danish username, and you think nothing of how privileged you are compared to others who wish they could have their own culture back.



The irony of this statement is astonishing. You actually know where your ancestors are from. What about African-Americans who complain about cultural appropriation? Do they have the privilege of saying "My ancestors from so-and-so country"?? No, most of them don't. The question is, why don't they? Why are most of them unable to find out?

Should it surprise anyone if some African Americans want to hold on to whatever they can? What would you do, if you were in their situation? Can you even imagine yourself in the same situation? Not even knowing which country you, your parents, your grandparents etc came from?
Please do not presume because I am not Black that my ancestors might not have had their share of appression and cultural appropriation. Think Scots and Irish vs English. Better not were tartan, it's probably someone's name. Burberry is a copy of the Thomson camel as it happens. Or more recently the starvation, forced labor, theft and murder of Mennonites in the USSR. I absolutely understand not wanting to lose your culture. As it happens my culture is Canadian but I do hold on to the food of my grandparents in my life. I do have the privilege of being part of a majority vs a minority but to suggest on race has ownership of the race card doesn't work. Denying the rest of the world the right to wear their hair one way or another isn't a defensive act to me but a devissive act. Don't do that it's my culture. Don't listen to that or eat that it's mine mine mine. You don't understand because you are not one of us.

I think the racism that is a tumour on society is easily distracted by surface arguments like hair.

[luxurioushair]

So are you saying that dreadlocks should never be worn casually by people of any race? Your comments imply that because of the religious origins of the hairstyle, people should not wear dreadlocks unless they are doing so in what you consider to be the proper religious context. The problem is that dreadlocks have become a relatively common casually used hairstyle among blacks who are clearly not shamans, at least in North America. Even when I lived in Nigeria I saw some Nigerians -again, clearly not shamans- wearing dreadlocks like any other style. Dreadlocks were less common than other styles but still were definitely present. If African Americans and even West Africans are wearing dreadlocks casually, either not knowing or not caring about the style's origin, why is it any more "appropriative" if a white person does it?
Yes, that is what I am saying, because as I said, I believe strongly in the original meaning of the dreadlocks, and nothing is going to change that. (It's my opinion). What's not my opinion, is that religion is the reason dreadlocks came about. People nowadays might decide to turn it into "just a style". People nowadays might decide to devote themselves to the spirits, and then start growing dreads. What people want to do now, doesn't change actual history (or my opinion on it).


Please do not presume because I am not Black that my ancestors might not have had their share of appression and cultural appropriation. Think Scots and Irish vs English. Better not were tartan, it's probably someone's name. Burberry is a copy of the Thomson camel as it happens. Or more recently the starvation, forced labor, theft and murder of Mennonites in the USSR. I absolutely understand not wanting to lose your culture. As it happens my culture is Canadian but I do hold on to the food of my grandparents in my life. I do have the privilege of being part of a majority vs a minority but to suggest on race has ownership of the race card doesn't work. Denying the rest of the world the right to wear their hair one way or another isn't a defensive act to me but a devissive act. Don't do that it's my culture. Don't listen to that or eat that it's mine mine mine. You don't understand because you are not one of us.

I think the racism that is a tumour on society is easily distracted by surface arguments like hair.

Look, I know you will not ever understand this, so this is my last reply to you. Your ancestors' oppression did not lead to them being stripped of their very identity. For most African Americans, this is the reality. They will never, ever know where they came from. At least you know who your people are. Even White Americans who may not remember where they came from, can simply check the last names of their grandparents or great-grandparents, and trace the origin. It's easy these says with DNA testing (if your people "matter" to the testers, that is), though it's not very cheap. The average African American has nothing to go on. They can't use their European names to find out which African nation and tribe they are from. What guarantee is there that the DNA of their exact tribe is already recorded? Did you think this stuff over, or do you just not understand...How important it is to know that your ancestors were Scottish, or Irish, or Yoruba, or whatever? Anyway, to each her own, I'm done with explaining this.

[lapushka]

I have never seen dreads that I liked on a person with straight hair because of all the back combing and not-washing that those people I've seen have had to do (or have felt they had to do) to get them to form. They've just always looked damaged and gross. I've seen pictures of straight-hair dreads cut in half with collections of mold inside them.

One of the reasons I don't like them.

If you have 2/3 hair, by all means, but 1? Please lay off the dreads. It will look horrendous, whatever you do. Just IMMHO.

[Colochita]

One of the reasons I don't like them.

If you have 2/3 hair, by all means, but 1? Please lay off the dreads. It will look horrendous, whatever you do. Just IMMHO.

That's how I feel about it. I remember one guy at my school was very light skinned (never asked what race he was) but had curly hair (type 3?) that he grew into dreadlocks. I thought they looked great on him. Come to think of it, he got a lot of positive attention because he pulled them off so well.

------------

But seriously, if anyone doesn't understand the concept of cultural appropriation and wants to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KJRRSB_XA

This video does a great job of explaining it. It's really not about 'you can't have this because it's mine'. It's about people wearing someone else's reality as a style without acknowledging the struggles those people experience(d). It's about that reality now becoming 'cool' because the majority group is taking part in it. But rarely do the people who take part ever bother to consider what it's like for someone who can't just switch those things off.

For example, people who wrap their straight hair around foil and wear it as a cute faux afro rarely know of or consider young black girls who get kicked out of school for their hair growing that way out of their scalps. It's a trend to them when it's a struggle for other people. Similarly, people (read: white celebrities) who wear a head full of cornrows straight back are seen as 'edgy' when it's been a quintessential part of elementary school for little black girls for years. And guess what, they get teased for those. So why do you get featured by a magazine for them?

So the problem isn't 'you're not like me, so you can't do it'. It's 'why is it okay when you do it, but not me (especially since I've been doing it for so long)?'

There's a lot more to this argument, like members of the music industry who take bits of black culture and become popular as a result of it but who then stay silent on black issues (e.g. Black Lives Matter, police brutality, etc.).

For a lot of people, the reality feels like America likes Black culture but not Black people.

That's why cultural appropriation is such a thing.

Anyway, that is enough of a derail.

By the way, I'm not speaking specifically of dreadlocks in this post. Because of their religious connotations, lots of people are guilty of appropriating them. After having just done a mandatory class on oppression in the Caribbean and learning about Rastafarians in particular, that's a whole separate can of worms.

[Entangled]

Yes, that is what I am saying, because as I said, I believe strongly in the original meaning of the dreadlocks, and nothing is going to change that. (It's my opinion). What's not my opinion, is that religion is the reason dreadlocks came about. People nowadays might decide to turn it into "just a style". People nowadays might decide to devote themselves to the spirits, and then start growing dreads. What people want to do now, doesn't change actual history (or my opinion on it).


On the other hand, hair has religious value in many cultures. Where some shave their heads, grow to terminal without cutting, maintain long hair, or bun for religious reasons, others shave their heads, grow to terminal, grow long, or bun for aesthetic reasons and personal preference.

[chen bao jun]

I sort of wish that Luxurioushair would stop telling me that I don't understand how it feels to have a culture stolen from you as a person whose African ancestors were captured and sold by other Africans to European slave traders and shipped off on the Middle Passage to the Americans. I AM a person whose ancestors this happened to, I am really surprised that she managed to miss this.

Rather than her explaining to me how I'm supposed to feel, I 'd much discuss more interesting things like current religious beliefs in the area that she's from (which is something she actually knows something about and I don't).

If I was going to hang to feeling mad at people for history, I could just possibly be sitting here writing 'educational' posts aimed at her because just possibly (no one will ever know), her ancestors were the ones who captured my ancestors in some war/raid and sold them off for revenge (or just because they wanted some spare cash/cowrie shells). Because of course, two centuries later, she should be blamed. Right. I don't see how this would be different than sitting here blaming all white people and telling them what they can/cannot do with their hair because some white people used to own slaves. Or even because some white people when I was a kid were racist fools and had the power to enforce their foolishness, sometimes violently even. Nobody on this forum actually had anything to do with any of that even if it was their very own parent who did some of it and I CHOOSE to move on from it.

I CHOOSE to be grateful for the privileged, yes privileged life I have lived, with loving, caring parents who sacrificed to get me a great education, in a country that they moved to deliberately when I was a kid because they thought there were opportunities here for us (which there were). I would love to visit West Africa at some point. I know that some of my ancestors were Ibo people, and I cherish a hope to go to Nigeria and see where they lived (feeling sad for the horrible situation in Nigeria now with Boko Haram, etc). Some of my ancestors were European people too of course and I feel honestly, less connected to them, because I don't look like them and because my ancestors kept more of the culture of the (African) mothers who raised them than the (European) fathers who didn't --well, let's just say that they didn't usually do all that much for their mixed children (though I have one great grandfather from a Scottish background who did and a grandmother, his daughter, who passed on good memories of him and my father's grandfather, from England also was a stable presence until he died and an influence).

I see no point in agonizing over a culture and names or whatever that were lost, yes, when I can celebrate a very rich culture that developed in the place where I was born, out of tragedy and terror yes, but also out of resilience and the will to go on and make something new and beautiful.

My country is a very little country and not many people know much about us, but everybody everywhere knows about the beauty of what African Americans developed in the same circumstances. To just take the areas of music (jazz, blues, gospel) alone, what would the world be like without this? there's also art, there's also literature, there's also continual and constant influence on fashion, language, food, many, many things. i don't see it as 'stealing' that people want to share in this. You can go back 50 years and say that great African American musicians did not get their due while white musicians who imitated them became wealthy and famous--but is this the case any longer nowadays? It isn't. And part of the process of dismantling the system of institutionalized racism in the U.S. was the white musicians in Europe, England, France, Germany who greedily listened to all the American black music they could and then came over here, not only telling people about these influences on them, but searching these old timers out and making them famous and appreciated finally, when they could. And stating again and again, that there IS a unique American culture, dfferent from European, and a great deal of that is because of the huge African influence.

I remember my Dad, when people in the African American neighborhoods began talking about the lost culture and making up names that they thought sounded African and taking them on, talking to us about why we had been given our names. Mine is from his mother, my grandmother. Later when I studied black history in college (I studied as much as I could, it was mostly African American because the Caribbean and Latin America were ignored in those days but I have kept up with what has been discovered since), I learned that in the African diaspora, even though people had European names, they kept up African customs of naming after ancestors. Also that when people went back and studied the records of what the emancipated people, one thing that they discovered is that the a majority, not absolutely everybody, but a majority of the freed people didn't keep the last names of former slave master, they chose themselves a new name. That was significant to them. In their new language, English. Therefore, the last names of most AFrican Americans are not 'slave' names but names that their ancestors CHOSE for some significance they had. And back when people were mostly named European names, they were being named after ancestors in a West African way, it had actually much more significance familialy and culturally than nowadays, when people it seems try to choose some name for their child connected to nothing and nobody in their heritage. (Though that's their right, of course).

You can sit around feeling sorry for yourself--or you can--go out and meet other people. And hear other stories. One of my best, best friends is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Talk about somebody that doesn't have to go back in history or even to a former generation, somebody who LITERALLY had everything stolen from them personally. Everything. She has photos on her wall of her extended family pre- 1941 (when her country was invaded)--and she just points at person after person and names the concentration camp they died in. As a 12 year old girl, she went to a ghetto (and was lucky to get there, most of the children her age were killed, she was smuggled in) and from there to 3 different concentration and finally, to a death march at age 16. Her father died at Auschwitz. She was lucky to have two brothers survive the war, but though one of them got to Israel, the other then spent years after the war in a Soviet camp and the family never saw him again. She went back to the place where she was born about ten years ago. There was nothing allowed to remain there that would remind anybody that Jews ever lived there. This was not by Nazi Germans but by the people in that nation, children and descendants of people her famly lived with, worked with and thought that they got along with. I mean, the Jewish cemetary had been razed, not just places like the synagogues. It was like, complete and total obliteration.

And she was a slave. In the concentration camps, they were slaves. They worked without pay, without proper clothes or heat or medication and you are talking about names--they had no names. They had numbers. The people allowed to live on for just a little bit. She was supposed to be worked to death and then cremated like a piece of trash, as her father was; she was told that she was not a human being.

Do you know what she does nowadays? And she's 86 years old this year. She goes around to schools and to prisons and to anywhere that she can get an audience and she teaches people NOT TO HATE. She always says that she doesn't hate Germans. She says it wasn't Germans, it was Nazis and then she says she doesn't hate Nazis. AFter the war, she was lucky to find not just the one brother alive but her mother. She had thought her mother had been killed because she was an older woman and her mother thought she had been eliminated because she was a child. She says that her mother told her again and again that the important thing to do with her experience was not to hate. Her mother would say that if she spent her life filled with hate because of what had happened to "then Hitler will have won."

I believe this with all my heart.

Here is a link where you can hear my friend speak. I dare someone to listen to what she has to say and after that still feel sorry for themself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaKFNEV7tOA

[chen bao jun]

I do concede to Colochita and Luxurioushair that some people have naturally dreading hair. I guess I was wrong about that. I do wonder though what the salons and so forth in black neighborhoods helping people to dread their hair are there for, but I guess it must simply be because all people of African descent don't have naturally dreading hair, but just some. We are a diverse group, no doubt about that. I don't concede that the corollary of that is that only AFrican descent people are allowed to dread their hair. I repeat that that would logically mean that I'd have to go around being judgmental of people with African hair textures who straighten, and I've been around people who do THAT. Obnoxious.

[Colochita]

I just want to say that while it's not as bad as the 50s, white celebrities still are appreciated for things that black celebrities aren't appreciated for. Recent things include: Iggy Azalea and rap despite her writing blatantly racist tweets on social medial and Kim Kardashian 'being heralded as bring back the big butt' - things slaves were literally put on display and ridiculed for.

Bad things happened (and happen) to everyone, yes. I would never say that nothing bad happened to anyone else. I just don't get why we're trying to pretend that nothing bad is happening to black people. Is the school to prison pipeline and police brutality today not bad enough? What about the recent regulations that tried to ban hairstyles worn predominantly by black women from the military? I'm not denying things have improved, but they're certainly not perfectly rosy.

I concede that I'm quite privileged as well, but I also care about other people who aren't. It just so happens that I know more about the experiences of black people than any other group since I grew up in a predominantly black community.

And the salons exist so that you can have 'neat' dreadlocks. I promise you that if I leave my hair alone it will turn into locs by itself, it might just not be the locs that I'd want to wear out. And even then, if I were to part it and leave it parted I'd probably get those too.

[chen bao jun]

Just to clarify, I am not accusing people who are claiming cultural appropriation of being haters. I jsut read back over my post and I see that it could be read like that. That was not my intention.

I think the concept of cultural appropriation leads to self-pity and a victim mentality, not necessarily a hater mentality. Not saying either that those who claimed it is valid are self-pitying (Luxurious Hair couldn't be, because she is not talking about what happened to her people personally) but that it does lead to self pity taken to its logical end. I have met haters too, who started this way. Self-pity doesn't always but often leads to jealousy (as in, other people from some certain group all have better chances/better lives than me) and then often to hate ( as in, let's make it 'fair' by force). Which makes it a dangerous path to start on. But even worse, self-pity leads to thinking "I have no chance to make something better of myself, the cards are all stacked against me" and then to not even trying and then there is a spiral one gets sucked into where you don't do better because you don't/are afraid to try and then you get even madder and talk even more about how bad things are for you, teaching your children that its not even worth trying and down and down and down. it can even lead to where you think you have a right to commit crimes to sort of 'even things up.'

I know these things from what I saw. I lived in a ghetto for many, many years when I was a kid. i knew an astonishing amount of people who were already defeated as kids and 'knew' not to try things because nothing good was ever going to happen for any body with a dark skin ( meaning, AFrican descent, not the actual skin tone). And um, yeah, nothing good ever happened for them and they are still back in the ghetto. That kind of prophecy is by nature self-fulfilling.

Not to say that you can't try and not succeed with things or that everyone who is in a ghetto somehow deserves to be there. It's more complicated than that, often.

But its a sure way to not succeed, not to try and to wait for somebody else to help you out until the cows come home.

[TR]

I do concede to Colochita and Luxurioushair that some people have naturally dreading hair. I guess I was wrong about that. I do wonder though what the salons and so forth in black neighborhoods helping people to dread their hair are there for, but I guess it must simply be because all people of African descent don't have naturally dreading hair, but just some.

Might people just go to the salons to get a more "professionally done" look to their dreads, even if their hair naturally likes dreads? You know, perhaps to make sure the dreads are evenly spaced and uniform in size, which is probably difficult to do on the back of your own head.

[Colochita]

I also completely disagree, chen, with it turning into self-pity!

In college I saw so many people who became aware of things like cultural appropriation and then went on to make huge waves. They went from noticing appropriation of Asian culture (these were Asian - Hmong students) to bringing awareness to the whole campus through forums and panels to campaigning to get our intercultural credit changed to be more meaningful. (You could get the credit at that time from reading a book out of class time.)

I saw black people champion to get black products in our on campus store and host events to teach their fellow students about microaggressions (little everyday things that are offensive that people may not realize).

It really doesn't need to turn into self-pity and I've never personally seen it do so. It's always been the beginning of awareness from what I've seen. People have said 'I notice that and I dislike it. How can I fix it or at least make it a little better?' and they wind up working with the United Nations.

I've never felt so strongly as to become a warrior for social justice, but it's great to see people who can and do.

For me, being aware of cultural appropriation has made me wiser to the things that I do and why. For example, I wouldn't wear a piece of traditional Indian clothing with no idea what it is and what it means, because I feel that would be offensive. I wouldn't dress up as someone else's culture for Halloween, etc. I honestly think it's made me aware of my own cultural missteps and I'm grateful for that at least.

[ebaviisakas]

I don't see a problem with white people having dreads, other than that it looks bad on everyone I have ever seen it on.
I do not think it's an appropriate hairstyle for a work where you have to look presentable, same way a faux hawk would not be or those hairstyles where they shave your head to look like a soccer ball.
To be honest though I don't really understand the whole thing about cultural appropriation, I did read the whole thread but I do not see how any of it is racist.. I would be flattered if a foreigner took interest in my culture or the clothes and hairstyles.

[chen bao jun]

I just want to say that while it's not as bad as the 50s, white celebrities still are appreciated for things that black celebrities aren't appreciated for. Recent things include: Iggy Azalea and rap despite her writing blatantly racist tweets on social medial and Kim Kardashian 'being heralded as bring back the big butt' - things slaves were literally put on display and ridiculed for.

Bad things happened (and happen) to everyone, yes. I would never say that nothing bad happened to anyone else. I just don't get why we're trying to pretend that nothing bad is happening to black people. Is the school to prison pipeline and police brutality today not bad enough? What about the recent regulations that tried to ban hairstyles worn predominantly by black women from the military? I'm not denying things have improved, but they're certainly not perfectly rosy.

I concede that I'm quite privileged as well, but I also care about other people who aren't. It just so happens that I know more about the experiences of black people than any other group since I grew up in a predominantly black community.

And the salons exist so that you can have 'neat' dreadlocks. I promise you that if I leave my hair alone it will turn into locs by itself, it might just not be the locs that I'd want to wear out. And even then, if I were to part it and leave it parted I'd probably get those too.

I think I said I believed you about the dreadlocks, Colochita.

I don't think anybody that said that things with black people nowadays are perfectly rosy, either. I certainly did not.

I would actually say that black people have a slew of problems nowadays are very scary and that they did not actually have during the times when institutionalized racism was rampant. When people had to sit on the back of the bus and couldn't vote and well, you guys know the history, I'm sure, we did not have 80% illegitimacy rate (or something close to that); the incredible crime problem among young black men, which hits the black community first and foremost (whites are usually safe from black crime, they don't live where it affects everybody all the time); the homicide rate among same, on each other, which is what actually makes being a young black man equivalent to being someone living in a war zone--its not the police killing more than 90% of the young black man who die at the appalling rate that they do, they are killing each other and it never get publicized at all; I could go on and on.

Yes, there are some racist white people and some institutionalized racism still left but it's not what's destroying us and if you could get every single white person to not wear dreadlocks and the army not to require that black people not wear dreadlocks and braided extension ( I forget exactly what hairstyles they banned) we would still be in serious trouble as a community, which needs to be paid attention to and I feel it is not.

But I didn't go in this direction in my post because we were talking about something specific, which was, is cultural appropriation an important thing and can white people wear dreadlocks.

I also lived mostly around black people until I was your age and I also care about people who aren't privileged. We have always had good discussions before Colochita and I respect you and your opinions and hope we are also going to have thoughtful discussion this time, even if I an not on your side with this cultural appropriation thing, which I am not.

I also hope we are going to have a serious discussion. You are not seriously saying that Kim Kardashian being celebrated for having a big butt proves that the entertainment industry is full of racism? And that it's the same as black people being sidelined into 'race records' that made less money and got no exposure compared to mainstream records in the bad old days? there may be (honestly there probably, actually certainly is )racism in the music industry nowadays still on some levels but I think the existence of Kim Kardashian, period, and the fact that she is so famous for doing absolutely nothing, ever, except first being in a porn video and then having a reality show that showcased that she's a fool, even though she made lots and lots of money for it, says more about other problems in our society than it does about racism. As for the other lady, I haven't heard of her, but if she made 'blatantly racist tweets' on social media she certainly ought to have some repercussions from that.

I think that people who show themselves, personally to be racist, (which there are such people) should have it brought up to them and have it discussed in the open and that people who are truly insensitive ought to be called on it (I thought it was important to call out the lady over on the other thread who made the not very nice remarks about her hair turning African American and thus being 'damaged') but I don't think that people who want to have a particular hairstyle would fall into that category just because they want to have a particular hairstyle. And I don't think that they need to be schooled about the sad life of being black which is where I honestly thought that Luxurioushair was not only going--I feel she actually went there. She repeated and repeated through SEVERAL posts how everybody had to understand what a horrible thing it was for black Americans to have their culture stolen and how it somehow meant that dreadlocks are off limits for whites and then signed off in a temper saying that everybody was refusing to understand (and I felt it was because everybody wasn't agreeing with her).

I think it was quite to the point for me to give my opinion that what she was saying was not something that everyone agrees about, either as regards the dreadlocks, or as regards the 'strategy' I guess I would call it, of continually presenting black people as a being a particularly pitiable group. I for one, get extremely sick of people who have only ever have this viewpoint presented to them (black people as perpetual victims) very naturally assuming immediately when they meet me that I have led this sad life. I think it makes me seem like less as a human being and as if I always need some sort of 'understanding' or to be given a break. And I used to be a teacher, actually a college professor and it was horrible, to be frank, the way I saw students being damaged because the administration had bought this sob story. I saw very capable, intelligent young people being told all the time how people needed to understand that because of their so -called underprivileged backgrounds, they would, of necessity, underperform. And then guess what? they DID underperform.

]But like 100% of the black students that I had in my class performed just the same as the white students did, because I would fight the administration and say they HAD to, or else I was going to give them a very low grade or fail them. and I would tell them, when I heard the sob stories that I came from that background and because it was never considered an excuse for anything in my home, not only performed the same as anybody else, but even excelled.

I can't tell you how many students I had who would come up to me after all the fighting was done and thank me for insisting that they could do better. I even failed one once, who came to me before he graduated with tears in his eyes and said that nobody had ever held him to any standard of any kind before in his life and that after he failed my class (and was not allowed to play basketball for a term, he was on a basketball scholarship), his whole life changed. once he realized he was going to be held accountable and had to do his best, he did do his best. And his best turned out to very damned good. and after that, he never looked back.

It was not all my black students not doing their best and expecting some extra slack by any means, but it was a significant minority of them and ALL of them that had this mindset without exception would come into my office and tell me this sad story usually beginning "You know how it is for us" (as if I should be on their side automatically) and be surprised as anything when I would say that I wasn't buying it. Again, I repeat, what was appalling to me was how the administration would buy it. to me, that was racism. I felt like they were essentially, give the black students a break because they are not as intelligent. How offensive.

Jsut to let you know a little more of where I am coming from.

[chen bao jun]

Just saw your last post Colochita and let's agree to disagree.
I respect what you saw, I don't agree with you and I'm tired.
Looking forward to having other profitable discussions with you at later times.

[TR]

For me, being aware of cultural appropriation has made me wiser to the things that I do and why. For example, I wouldn't wear a piece of traditional Indian clothing with no idea what it is and what it means, because I feel that would be offensive. I wouldn't dress up as someone else's culture for Halloween, etc. I honestly think it's made me aware of my own cultural missteps and I'm grateful for that at least.

I (a white American) lived in Lagos, Nigeria for a few years, working for an American oil company. Expats were welcome, sometimes even encouraged, to wear traditional Nigerian clothes. For instance at Nigerian weddings all female attendees are encouraged to have dresses made from a fabric chosen by the wedding couple. Like bridesmaids except it's for ALL the ladies. People (Nigerian or not) might choose a Nigerian or western dress style, though the majority usually choose a Nigerian style. Or at my son's American international school, where about half the students were Nigerian and the other half comprised of over 30 other nationalities, they celebrated Nigerian Culture Day and encouraged all students and their parents to attend wearing Nigerian clothes. Even in my office it was common for employees including expats to wear Nigerian clothing to work. Every single time I wore Nigerian clothes I received compliments from Nigerians (coworkers, friends, strangers, passing acquaintances, everyone). My hair is not at all suited for styles like twist outs, box braids, or corn rows so I never tried any, but I knew a few white expat women who did. They received only positive attention from the Nigerians. I was told by some Nigerians that they liked seeing the expats making an effort to fit into their surroundings. I don't presume to know what ALL Nigerians think, I can only speak to my own experiences. Neither I nor any expat I knew ever had a negative comment from any Nigerian if they wore Nigerian clothes or hairstyles. Again, I don't presume to say that ALL Nigerians have positive feelings on this topic. But you can't travel anywhere in Lagos without seeing thousands of people and I never heard even a rumor of an expat catching grief for wearing Nigerian clothes or hairstyles, so I'm going to guess that it's not some huge cultural offense there.

All that said, now that I no longer live in Nigeria I would not wear my Nigerian clothes anymore because it would just look so out of place. Even the Nigerians who live in my area generally wear only western clothes. It's not that I'm afraid of offending anyone, I just prefer to blend in.

[Colochita]

Well I guess we can agree to respectfully disagree. I'm tired as well and have exams to study for.

[Colochita]

TR, I don't think what you did would be considered cultural appropriation at all. You learned about Nigerian culture, lived in it and shared in it. I have absolutely nothing against that.

If you had owned a clothing store in the U.S., visited Nigeria in passing, picked up a print and then resold it in your U.S. store as 'Trendy Tribal Print' with no mention of its Nigerian origin and no knowledge of the culture or desire to know of it, that would have been appropriation.

Like I said, it's really not about 'this is all mine and you cannot share in it'.

ETA: I really think it boils down to being respectful while you do it.

While I was living and studying in Guatemala we learned about the traditional clothing of the indigenous groups that lived there. It was heavily discriminated against in Guatemalan society and the amount of people that wore it was dwindling. Even so it was still readily available in markets.

A few of my Minnesotan classmates bought full traditional outfits and wore them sometimes while there. They received mixed responses, some very positive, some less so.

I asked one of my indigenous teachers how they really felt about it and she told me it was double edged. While it was great to see foreigners appreciating an aspect of their culture that was being neglected, it really hurt them that over time the clothing would just become a costume to pull out at 'Spanish-themed' events.

And sadly that was what happened once we got back to Minnesota.

Obviously she doesn't speak for all the indigenous people in Guatemala, but she does speak for some.

---

Another incident I remember was fairly public and recent when a celebrity wore chopsticks in her hair to a China themed night at some gala. She got instant backlash from Chinese people because she was doing it wrong. (I have no idea how Chinese hairstyles work so forgive me for not knowing exactly what was wrong.)

She took them out before the night was over.

---

Another similar incident was an article written by an African woman living in America chastising African Americans for wearing prints from Africa with no idea which country or tribe they came from. Her issue was with people mis-matching them and then presenting themselves as wearing 'authentically African clothing' while in her mind they didn't represent any part of Africa at all because they were entirely mixed up.

I saw a similar statement from a Native American writer regarding mismatching different pieces from different tribes.

---

Around the same time I saw an article by a woman who sold clothing from some country in African that was shutting down business because Chinese companies had begun copying the print and mass producing it on low quality fabric, effectively lowering the price and she couldn't compete. Of course they didn't identify where the clothing came from. It was 'African print'.

Her grievances were twofold:

1) She was being run out of business.
2) People would begin to believe that African clothing was thin and cheap-looking.

---

I cite all these to say, people don't really want to exclude for the most part. They really just want to be respected.

[chen bao jun]

TR, that sounds like when I lived in Taiwan.

I still wear Chinese clothes a bunch of the time. That is, I wear a qipao, which I think is a lovely style and very flattering for a lot of formal events.

When I went back to China recently though (China and Taiwan have the same Chinese culture, the distinction is political)--I noticed only the the hostesses and waitresses there now wearing it. I went to one event at which I was wearing the EXACT same qipao as all the waitresses, it was hilarious, lucky I'm not thin-skinned--

I don't know what a qipao now says in Taiwan however, and in the overseas Chinese communities people definitely wear them, especially for weddings. A bride has to have one (well, several, kind of like a Japanese bride and a kimono) for the wedding and a lot of the guests wear them, too.

To tell the truth, I am going to wearing them because they look so good on me. That's the main reason at this point, though obviously I still love Chinese culture (and still speak Chinese, etc). And because they don't look odd here, but interesting, definitely always starts a conversation. I also have a lot of Chinese hairpins and jewelry.

I don't think I appear at all to be trying to pass as Chinese. In fact, I know I don't.

Interestingly, I would LOVE to wear clothes from West African cultures, own a few of them that are very authentic (friends recently gave me clothes from Cote d'Ivoire and they are just beautiful, I love fabric and craftsmanship and I can't get over how well made and classy)--and they look absolutely horrible on me. I don't know why. Something about the styles are just disastrous with my figure type. The prints are also almost always too big for me to manage. I've got Caucasian friends that definitely look better in actual Ivoirian dresses than I do, which Ivoirians have given them and delighted to see them in. They tend to be tall and have what I would call 'a proud bearing'. My one (white)friend wears them for most special occasions, she looks so good, and enjoys telling people aobut them and how she got them when they compliment her. They don't compliment me. I'm really tiny, and I look drowned and overwhelmed.

What I can do sometimes is take the lovely fabric (I have some from Ghana, some from Nigeria and some from Cote d'ivoire and Senegal) and make more fitted, sheath style dresses that are flattering, with certain prints. (I have to pick them carefully). I love to do this and always get compliments. But I can never wear the actual dresses and especially not if I also try to a matching headwrapping. So its not always that because you have ancestors from there that the clothes are flattering.

If you follow fashion, they are always pulling pieces out and imitating some culture--Currently it is Eastern European. Or at least it was earlier this year. My Ukrainian friends are delighted and love telling people, that looks like Ukrainian! That looks like Ukrainian! Which nobody else knows, of course--its never credited.

[lapushka]

So what happens, for instance, with celebrities such as Halle berry, who goes into a total different direction and wears her hair totally ironed out. Is that "stealing white culture" - what if you turn this around? Or... can't you?

[Nique1202]

So what happens, for instance, with celebrities such as Halle berry, who goes into a total different direction and wears her hair totally ironed out. Is that "stealing white culture" - what if you turn this around? Or... can't you?

The problem with this is twofold. For one, when white people are the dominant culture (hold the most political, social, and economical power) there is no such thing as racism against white people there. Racism is the result of imbalance of powers forcing a group (whether that's women, or black people, or native americans, or non-Christians) into a form of social submission. The same way you can't counter "kill all men" with "kill all women would be sexist so why isn't kill all men" because men hold social power that women still lack (and believe me I can have this discussion but it's not one that should happen in this thread) you can't say "what if black people wear their hair like white people, that's appropriating us". White people in the west hold nearly all the influence over social norms because they hold nearly all the social power, and ever since slavery was still legal white people forced black people to take on white norms so they wouldn't be reminded of their individuality and humanity.

For two, black people and people of all non-white cultures are already expected to assimilate into white culture in the West and adopts its norms. Black people are expected to relax and straighten their hair, anyone with dark skin is expected to want to look paler (look at the popularity of bleaching creams in places with strong historical European influence like India and among immigrants to the West), and non-European cultures are expected to disappear when either a white culture moves in (like the English, French, and Spanish coming into the Americas) or when people migrate from other places into dominant-white societies. That's why wearing dreadlocks or afros or other natural hairstyles for black people is a subversive act in so many ways, and it's why those hairstyles (and things like bindis and saris and headscarves and war bonnets and kimono and so many others) are considered undesirable or ugly on people of colour, while white people who wear them are being ~quirky~ and ~trendy~ because they already have whiteness so they don't get looked down on the same way.

[lapushka]

Makes sense...

[Anje]

As near as I can tell, the big difference is between sharing/joining in with a culture vs taking elements from that culture and using them out of context. People are pleased and flattered when you join in with their traditions in a respectful way -- it shows that you value their culture. They're often annoyed when you take something special to them and wear it as a costume or otherwise disregard their feelings and traditions. When anyone chooses to dress/act/eat more according to the dominant local culture, it tends to be interpretted as "joining in". Does that sound about right?

OP -- if you choose to wear dreadlocks, are you prepared to see this discussion play out over and over and over? Because it will, and people who don't know you won't know in what context you're wearing your hair, and some will probably make their own snap judgements about it.

[Colochita]

Anje, that's how I feel about it.
Nique1202, thank you for explaining.

Respectfully bowing out of this thread. Sorry for persistently derailing! Best to you OP no matter how you wear your hair. :flower:

[chen bao jun]

Makes sense...

Actually it does not.

Unless you accept the underlying premise that white people are responsible for all the ills of the world, which the very selective summation of post 16th century history in 'Nique's summation is tailored to get across.

As for the idea that 'kill all men' is a less problematic statement somehow than 'kill all women' --what can I really say? This can only be supported by some very, very twisted logic. Re-read that paragraph. If you can't see that, something has gone seriously askew with your moral compass. Scarily askew.

I am sure that 'Nique got very good grades in her college classes. Her little essay could have come straight out of a current college textbook.

I am also leaving this thread with this question--does any past or even present unfairness to blacks, 'non-white peoples' or women in any way justify this kind of thing? The bald statement hat it is less wrong to harm a white person than a black or a man than a woman? It sounds like an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth to me. Like two wrongs make a right, with the scary addition that you do not personally have to have done the wrong. It sounds like the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution in embryo--a la lanterne--just switch 'white people' for 'aristocrats' .

I used to ask my students and I am asking you now to please always, always remember that IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.

[littlestarface]

This is pretty messed up, like whites have no rights and shouldnt be offended or call someone racists for those being racists to them just cuz their white.

[hannabiss]

Dang. I'm late to the convo. Well I was under the impression that if left uncombed anyone's hair will form dreads. In fact I've seen it happen on a boy named Cody in high school who stopped combing his hair to make "free form" dreads. So although some may consider it a very meaningful hair style is it not true that all humans would form dreads over a long enough time? People wear Mohawks that are not native American. IDK personally I've seen many different hair styles o many different people. Personally I could care less what you have on your head so much as in it.

[calmyogi]

I am another black person whose hair will naturally form dreadlocks if I don't detangle or comb it.

That said, it will definitely come across as cultural appropriation no matter how much you will it not to be. If you are lily white with dreadlocks, people, black people included, will judge you. That's just how things are. And, yes, I will probably judge you too.

I have never seen dreads that I liked on a person with straight hair because of all the back combing and not-washing that those people I've seen have had to do (or have felt they had to do) to get them to form. They've just always looked damaged and gross. I've seen pictures of straight-hair dreads cut in half with collections of mold inside them.

But what I have seen is those same people assume my black friends with dreads don't wash their hair or are in general nasty. They cut off their moldy dreads, grow straight hair, and then judge from their experience - which they now view as global.

None of this has to affect what you do with your hair. It is your hair after all.

I lived in a county in California where there were lots of white people with dreads and the clean people cleaned their dreads and dried them properly and did not get mold. And from what I have learned is that your cautioned to have clean hair not dirty hair while forming dreads.

[calmyogi]

Let's have world without cultural appropriation.

Italians give the spaghetti back to the Chinese (big cultural appropriator, that Marco Polo) and definitely stop making tomato sauce. Tomatoes are in their cultural context only in the Americas. Speaking of which, let the Irish stop pretending potatoes are a national dish there. They are also from the Americas. Only got to Europe because of that terrible villain, Christopher Columbus.

Washington D.C. --all of the central buildings must be ripped down. They are culturally appropriated from Greece--all those columns and pediments and so forth. Come to think of it, the Greeks culturally appropriated columns and a lot of their architecture from the Egyptians. Nobody should be allowed to hold buildings up with those things outside of Africa anymore. And oh my goodness, these ancient peoples used them in temples--they had a RELIGIOUS meaning, very important to those peoples. And we are using them for just regular buildings, that must stop.

How dare we ride around in cars? Or on bicycles? Wheels came from the ancient Middle East, Mesopotamia specifically--that's in modern Iraq. Take the wheels off the cars!! And speaking of other things that came ultimately from there--wow, too many to list in a readable length post. Give the Iraqis back their culture!! Let's all find caves to live in and animal skins to wear, rather than rip off these people--think how they must feel to see the whole world appropriating so much from their Mesopotamian culture and not giving them any credit at all!!

Get the idea? This is why the whole idea of cultural appropriation is utterly and completely ridiculous. We would literally all be in a cave, hunting and gathering, if everybody had not borrowed freely from certain ancient cultures--and then adapted the borrowings to suit their climate, the way their hair grew, their own ideas. No people has a lock on the spread of cultural ideas, foodways, music, and yes, fashion, to all over the globe where people WILL use it any way it suits them.

Speaking of which, find me some group of people somewhere that hasn't ever been 'oppressed'. Tell me what people haven't EVER been enslaved by somebody or the other. Who hasn't been conquered, slaughtered, victimized etc. etc? And then, find me a group of people who haven't ever DONE this to somebody else? Go on, find me one. Even on little islands in the Pacific where there are two groups of people that outsiders couldn't tell one of them from the other, they make war on each other with slingshots and stone knives and bully and put down each other.

If you think you are from the only group of people who has ever been oppressed, or that your group of people has been specially oppressed more than anyone else in the world, ever, and for longer, you need to get out more. Do some more reading definitely, outside of your college textbooks in your 'ethnic studies' classes. And anyway, even if you were, why would having been 'oppressed' give you a special right to dictate to any body else?

And as for being sensitive to other people's religions, why is it that when 'artists' and filmmakers and singers, etc. deliberately and openly trash Jesus and the Virgin Mary and things sacred to Christians, you don't hear a thing about being sensitive but instead a lot about how brave the artist was and how significant the work was and how we all ought to strive to understand it and be open-minded? And the artist gets all kinds of awards and praises? Chris Ofili, Andres Serrano, people like that, why isn't someone ever telling them to be culturally sensitive?

Of course no one means that people should go around deliberately insulting other people or that because this concept is now so misused, there are no people being mistreated or abused any more, anywhere that we need to pay attention to. But unfortunately, when people are actually currently suffering to a horrific extent (the Chaldeans for instance)they are not in a position to get out and talk about it and complain and are at mercy of the news media bothering to report about them, which doesn't always happen. Maybe because the news media is too busy giving lots and lots of space to people who are well fed and well clothed in the United States complaining that their feelings have been hurt. Again. And again and again.

This will be my last post on the subject because I think I am coming perilously close to straying into politics, which is not my intention--in the US at least, its very difficult for any politician of either of the major political parties to ignore the complaining of their constituents and all the myriad special interest groups and they all spend way too much time placating people and trying to phrase things in the exact right way so that nobody's feelings will get hurt--fiddling, in my opinion, while Rome burns.

Chin Bao Jun, I think you are a female incarnate of my husband.

[Colochita]

I lived in a county in California where there were lots of white people with dreads and the clean people cleaned their dreads and dried them properly and did not get mold. And from what I have learned is that your cautioned to have clean hair not dirty hair while forming dreads.

I've never been to California and I can't discount your experience but the first thing that comes up in Google when I type 'white person dreadlocks' is 'white dreadlocks 'mold'', so I think it is a pretty common problem.

[Aubren]

Whattttt? White privilege is a thing, and always will be whether we like it or not. Saying "whites have no rights" is a joke. Take a history class and see all of the rights whites have been given simply based on their skin color. And for the record, I'm white. It's just a ****ty history, and embarrassing. Primarily American history.

Chen you have made the most sense on this entire thread. My children are african American /Haitian/half whatever the heck I am (my mother is unknown and my father doesn't know our history) but I look white. And while I want my children to know history, I want them to learn from it and not perpetuate ignorance or pity. Racism still exists and people like luxurioushair add fuel to the fire. We need to stop hating and work on loving. It's sad how easy it is to be angry, and how hard it is for us to love each other for who we are, and nothing more or less.




This is pretty messed up, like whites have no rights and shouldnt be offended or call someone racists for those being racists to them just cuz their white.

[calmyogi]

As near as I can tell, the big difference is between sharing/joining in with a culture vs taking elements from that culture and using them out of context. People are pleased and flattered when you join in with their traditions in a respectful way -- it shows that you value their culture. They're often annoyed when you take something special to them and wear it as a costume or otherwise disregard their feelings and traditions. When anyone chooses to dress/act/eat more according to the dominant local culture, it tends to be interpretted as "joining in". Does that sound about right?

OP -- if you choose to wear dreadlocks, are you prepared to see this discussion play out over and over and over? Because it will, and people who don't know you won't know in what context you're wearing your hair, and some will probably make their own snap judgements about it.

My thought, though, is why not try to teach the individual about what it is they are sporting if they are ignorant to it. Why hate on them about it, just as they might not know what the cultural meaning is they also might not know its offensive to anyone. After they learn they might choose to put that item away and never use it again, or learn more about it.

[calmyogi]

I've never been to California and I can't discount your experience but the first thing that comes up in Google when I type 'white person dreadlocks' is 'white dreadlocks 'mold'', so I think it is a pretty common problem.

I just know the people I knew that made sure they were completely dry didn't have problems with mold. I'm curious why only a straighter texture hair would get mold and not other textures? I would think they would all mold, its all human hair.

[calmyogi]

I didn't realize this thread would get this many responses. I figured everyone would say they were gross and move on lol. I think they look good on all kinds of people, but I will probably never have them because of the work involved in keeping them clean and well looking it seems to be more time consuming.

[Entangled]

This thread has been fascinating.
As for my opinions on dreadlocks, I only like them when they are thin, so most white people/straight hair dreadlocks are out. Plus, I had to sit behind a guy in Spanish with brand new dreads and what looked like a dandruff problem all year long, so I've got a viscerally negative reaction to them. A question: it seems that most not-curly haired people's dreads curve inward, whereas I've seen many dreadlocks on people with tightly curly hair that just hangs straight. What is the cause of that?

[Entangled]

I just know the people I knew that made sure they were completely dry didn't have problems with mold. I'm curious why only a straighter texture hair would get mold and not other textures? I would think they would all mold, its all human hair.

I think it's less about the nature of the hair and more because people with straight hair TEND (not always, just tend) to have less knowledge on how to keep them healthy and neat.

[Colochita]

Calmyogi, Entangled put it better than I did. I'm sorry I implied that if a person has straight hair they must be dirty or have dirty hair. That wasn't my intention. Lots of people have misconceptions about dreadlocks and how to create them and take care of them.

However, I most often see those misconceptions - and the 'gross' results they can produce - in people with straight hair.

In Minnesota I often met people with straight hair desperate to get it to loc. They put all sorts of wax and grease and other things into it to force it to hold a shape and then professed that they could not wash it otherwise there would be no way for them to form.

I saw less of that desperation in the black community with locs because kinky hair likes to tangle on its own. And also, perhaps, because they are more common in the black community so people were more likely to have someone to explain the proper way to form and take care of them.

---

In response to your comment to Anje, we do want to teach! That is the goal - to get people to respect and understand. Trust me, people try. There will be some visceral, hateful reactions, but for the most part people are not mean and they will try to explain.

If the person puts the thing away after they're spoken to, it's not a problem at all. If they learn about the thing and respect it and then want to use it, aware of its history/meaning, that's fine too.

I gave the example upthread of the celebrity who took out her chopsticks after being told they were offensive. People really appreciated that she did that instead of wearing them throughout the night and ignoring the feelings of the actual Chinese people chastising her for them.

I also said upthread that dreadlocks are a really hard example and that I wouldn't begin to try to untangle their history of appropriation, since Rastafarians popularized them and are still facing rampant discrimination (including by black people) today.

[Anje]

I just know the people I knew that made sure they were completely dry didn't have problems with mold. I'm curious why only a straighter texture hair would get mold and not other textures? I would think they would all mold, its all human hair.

My impression is that it's because straight hair often gets stuff like wax applied in an attempt to help out form dreads, and that this then collects stuff and gets nasty and perhaps slows the drying time. Maybe... all my knowledge of such things is second-hand.

[lapushka]

Actually it does not.

Yes, but wouldn't you be stepping on some big toes when not agreeing?

[luxurioushair]

^ This makes a lot of sense and is quite interesting. :)
I was wondering: how does one moisturize and remove shed hairs from braids without having to unbraid them first? I'd love to be able to do that when my accent braids are way too complex to redo frequently, but my hair can mat up very quickly if I don't redo them soon.

I think braids are a great protective style specifically for keeping tangles out ... and yet, interestingly, braids are also used as a basis for locking hair, hmm... :hmm:

Sorry I didn't see your question before!

When it comes to removing shed hairs, my experience is that the hairs always move to the ends of the plaits. You can see them because they jut out more than the normal hair does. So I simply slide them out, and the whole long shed hair just comes right out. If it sounds easy, that's because it is. So when I loosen my hair, I don't get a lot of shed hairs coming out, because they were already removed while the plaits were in.

For moisturizing, I wet my hair everyday in the shower (sometimes twice a day if it was a scorching hot day). Then I apply argan oil. The hair dries on its own; if I have 15 minutes to walk in the sun, it will dry even faster. I have to apply oil everyday because all of it gets absorbed in 1 day, by the next morning my hair is drying out again.

If it's been 2-3 days since I washed my hair, I might co-wash it quickly to put the moisture back in. I wash my hair every 5 days right now. The only reason I really need to wash it that often, is dust from the air. I live close enough to the beach and to a cement factory for it to matter! There is extra dust everywhere. Before I wash my hair I must deep condition it, whether it's 20 minutes or 6 hours I make sure to do it so I win the battle against dryness.

My scalp is not the type to produce much oil, (if it is producing any at all??). It is naturally very dry, so if I didn't have the dust to worry about, goodness knows how long it would stay clean. But this also means that if I want my hair to be moisturized, I have to consistently do it myself, but I don't mind very much, since it's not nearly as time-consuming as washing my hair everyday or something.

[meteor]

Sorry I didn't see your question before!

When it comes to removing shed hairs, my experience is that the hairs always move to the ends of the plaits. You can see them because they jut out more than the normal hair does. So I simply slide them out, and the whole long shed hair just comes right out. If it sounds easy, that's because it is. So when I loosen my hair, I don't get a lot of shed hairs coming out, because they were already removed while the plaits were in.

For moisturizing, I wet my hair everyday in the shower (sometimes twice a day if it was a scorching hot day). Then I apply argan oil. The hair dries on its own; if I have 15 minutes to walk in the sun, it will dry even faster. I have to apply oil everyday because all of it gets absorbed in 1 day, by the next morning my hair is drying out again.

If it's been 2-3 days since I washed my hair, I might co-wash it quickly to put the moisture back in. I wash my hair every 5 days right now. The only reason I really need to wash it that often, is dust from the air. I live close enough to the beach and to a cement factory for it to matter! There is extra dust everywhere. Before I wash my hair I must deep condition it, whether it's 20 minutes or 6 hours I make sure to do it so I win the battle against dryness.

My scalp is not the type to produce much oil, (if it is producing any at all??). It is naturally very dry, so if I didn't have the dust to worry about, goodness knows how long it would stay clean. But this also means that if I want my hair to be moisturized, I have to consistently do it myself, but I don't mind very much, since it's not nearly as time-consuming as washing my hair everyday or something.

Thanks a lot for this information! :D It's so cool that you can easily slide out shed hairs while it's still in braids. :thumbsup:

I know what you mean about the dust accumulating fast. I find that it's specifically the oils (and leave-ins, styling products) that attract dust/lint/dirt the most, but almost any product can be a contributing factor... what helps me reduce this problem is to put hair up to compact it and cover it with a silky scarf whenever I need to clean around the house or do other chores. If I were to regularly pass by a cement factory or construction site or whatever, I'd probably wear a hat/scarf/buff/hood over a bun and take it down when the air is clear, or I would slide my hair under my shirt - just to temporarily cover hair from the little specks of dust... but yeah, it's really hard to avoid this problem completely...

[Goatcraft]

As a multiracial woman, I see nothing wrong with white people dreading their hair. It's only hair, that's all it is. To make it anything more is a bit strange to me.

I think they can look lovely, depending on how well the dreads are taken care of.

[woolyleprechaun]

When I opened this thread I really had high hopes that it wouldn't boil down to a culture-oriented debate. I'm chiming in as a white woman who's hair forms natural dreadlocks; no matter what I do with it it forms 9 or 10 distinct clumps that I constantly battle. A year ago I stopped fighting it and waited to see what happened... And my hair formed good dreads. I rolled the clumps, ditched the conditioner and washed more frequently. Several months later when I grew bored, I brushed them out- an ordeal that took a week and contributed to my increase of taper. So... I can honestly believe that dreadlocks are not historically unique to afro-Caribbean folk.
Regarding culture theft: I see many black ladies buying European hair weaves and questing to lighten their skin. Do I run around crying about that? Nope. Because I believe everyone is entitled to look the way they want, regardless of ethnic origin, and not be judged for it. Its 2015 for gods sake. While people whine about how we should look according to our race, we are just perpetuating discrimination and reducing human beings to the composition of their gene pool.

[luxurioushair]

Your post just makes me wonder if you actually read any of the discussions in this thread.

[Chromis]

Since this post has gotten a bit heated at times, I would like to post a reminder of the KNIT sticky and mention that we are monitoring this thread:

"I came for the hair care advice, but I stayed for the friends."

It has been said more than once that TLHC is one of the nicest sites on the 'net. That's because we have exceptional members who genuinely care about each other and terrific moderators who strive to make sure everyone has the best experience possible. The feeling created is very much like an extended family.

On occasion, however, a quarrel will occur, or a bit of snark will creep into people's messages, and this note is a gentle reminder that the best antidote for that is for everyone to monitor their own posts. Using the Report Button is a great help to the moderators by alerting us to problems, but prevention is a way that everyone can help maintain that warm community spirit. So, as we like to say, KNIT before you post.

Before you hit the "Submit" button, review what you're about to say.

Is it Kind?

Is it Necessary?

Is it Informative?

Is it True?


Read your words as if someone else were saying them to you. How would you receive them? Would you be offended, hurt or angry? If your post doesn't pass those tests, try again. If you simply can't compose something, let the thread go, and maybe try again later.

Every once in a while, there will be something that you cannot agree with. No one expects there to be a complete meeting of minds on every single topic discussed here. In those cases, we ask for tolerance - not acceptance, but tolerance. The other person is always worthy of respect. If you post, do not attack. Agree to disagree, and let your words be civil and even as kind as possible.

Thank you, everyone, for making this such a wonderful community.

/modbold

[Chromis]

This thread has been fascinating.
As for my opinions on dreadlocks, I only like them when they are thin, so most white people/straight hair dreadlocks are out. Plus, I had to sit behind a guy in Spanish with brand new dreads and what looked like a dandruff problem all year long, so I've got a viscerally negative reaction to them. A question: it seems that most not-curly haired people's dreads curve inward, whereas I've seen many dreadlocks on people with tightly curly hair that just hangs straight. What is the cause of that?

I'm not sure about how causes different hair textures to hang differently, but it might simply be method or how they like to wear them. I have seen dreadlocks that hang straight on different ethnicity heads of hair (I'm not sure how to make that sentence less awkward, but I have seen dreads on more than just "Black" or "White" people) and ditto for having an inward curve. I have even seen a few that flip outward, but not nearly as many.

Based on friends who I have seen with and without dreads, if they had dandruff troubles without dreads, they still had them with the locs too. I am not so sure that it is the style that causes the dandruff, just maybe it is a little more noticeable or that people look harder for it. (I get more comments about long leg hair when I am dressed in a more "hippy" manner than is I am dressed more formally as a weird example of people scrutinizing one aspect more when they have odd expectations based on stereotypes.)

I think lots of people can look great with dreadlocks, but more importantly it matters more what they think.

[Kimberly]

When my Polish ancestors found locks fashionable for a thousand years, or were growing locks to magically heal their illnesses, or were stuffing coins in their locks as offerings, they weren't trying to look like Bob Marley.

Some of the posts in this thread have been more than a little outrageous. Many peoples have worn locked hair, in cultures as different as those of Viking warriors and Hindu holy men. One race or culture does not hold a moral patent for what many people's hair -- including mine -- naturally does when left alone.

In the past I have considered leaving alone and wearing a small Polish plait, because of my ancestry, but this thread has made me feel like doing it out of defiance. And I don't like feeling that way, and now I am afraid if I do grow a plait I am going to be reminded of this irritating thread and my defiant feelings too often, so I guess I won't grow one now.

I don't think anyone in this thread intended to be offensive, and the claims that one culture or race has a moral patent on what my hair does naturally if I leave it alone are just plain funny, and I know most people didn't grow up where (for example) calling someone a "Polack" was almost on a par with the n-word so they wouldn't understand why someone of Polish ancestry might be touchy about this. I'm not even going to go into involuntary name changes for immigrants at Ellis Island and the results of that for those seeking to learn about their ancestry. In my experience, these sorts of conversations tend to sink to arguments about whose ancestors were more oppressed and how recently and who's suffering more because of it now -- which accomplishes little other than making people upset.

Hassling people about their chosen hairstyle is rude.

Chen's posts in this thread have been very wise.

[Entangled]

I'm not sure about how causes different hair textures to hang differently, but it might simply be method or how they like to wear them. I have seen dreadlocks that hang straight on different ethnicity heads of hair (I'm not sure how to make that sentence less awkward, but I have seen dreads on more than just "Black" or "White" people) and ditto for having an inward curve. I have even seen a few that flip outward, but not nearly as many.

Based on friends who I have seen with and without dreads, if they had dandruff troubles without dreads, they still had them with the locs too. I am not so sure that it is the style that causes the dandruff, just maybe it is a little more noticeable or that people look harder for it. (I get more comments about long leg hair when I am dressed in a more "hippy" manner than is I am dressed more formally as a weird example of people scrutinizing one aspect more when they have odd expectations based on stereotypes.)

I think lots of people can look great with dreadlocks, but more importantly it matters more what they think.

Oh, I realize the dandruff problem and dreads were unrelated! It's just that the whole effect of matted hair and skin flakes (plus his hair was blonde, so everything was noticeable) really grossed me out. On the other hand, there's a kid in my art class who has neat, even, pencil thin, shoulder length dreads which look very nice and don't gross me out at all. He's black (and I have no info at all about his race/ethnicity/cultural background at all, so I'm just going by looks), which is only reinforcing my idea that dreadlocks work a lot better on black people than white people in general.

[Jadestorm]

I am curious what everyone has to say about dreadlocks, specifically on white people?
If you were in a professional setting and recieving services from someone with dreadlocks would you feel like they were less competent at their job, such as a doctor, nurse, lawyer?

I personally don't care how other people want to wear their hair, as it's theirs. How I think it looks? It really depends on the way the dreads look. They can look very beautiful and neat, but they can also look somewhat disgusting if they're not maintained properly.

To me it's all about the hygiene and I think it's perfectly possible for dreads to look nice and clean. I've also seen many that weren't. So, that to me is what makes or breaks them in any professional setting.
For example if I were in hospital and a nurse came to take care of me I wouldn't appreciate filthy looking dreads that were almost slapping me in the face, if you know what I mean. It's just a matter of hygiene and appropriateness. However, if they dreads looked clean and groomed and were put up or tied into a ponytail or something, I wouldn't have a problem with it at all.

In a professional setting like the ones you mentioned I would prefer seeing them neatly tied together over having them hang loose. I would never think a person's hair has anything to do with their competence though, as long as the hair is clean and nicely groomed. And of course depending on which professional setting it can also be very appropriate to wear them loose.

[Colochita]

I just realized that no one made dreadlocks a black vs. white culture-stealing thing at any point. So where is it even coming from?

Luxurioushair mentioned specifically that she felt iffy about dreadlocks because of the spiritual meaning she was aware of and I mentioned specifically that I was not referring to dreadlocks when I discussed cultural appropriation.

I only spoke up because cultural appropriation is a real thing that hurts real people (and not just people of one culture) and specified multiple times that I wasn't talking about locs.

Did I miss something somewhere?

[TR]

I am another black person whose hair will naturally form dreadlocks if I don't detangle or comb it.

That said, it will definitely come across as cultural appropriation no matter how much you will it not to be. If you are lily white with dreadlocks, people, black people included, will judge you. That's just how things are. And, yes, I will probably judge you too.

I have never seen dreads that I liked on a person with straight hair because of all the back combing and not-washing that those people I've seen have had to do (or have felt they had to do) to get them to form. They've just always looked damaged and gross. I've seen pictures of straight-hair dreads cut in half with collections of mold inside them.

But what I have seen is those same people assume my black friends with dreads don't wash their hair or are in general nasty. They cut off their moldy dreads, grow straight hair, and then judge from their experience - which they now view as global.

None of this has to affect what you do with your hair. It is your hair after all.

Perhaps you didn't mean it, but you specifically said dreadlocks on white people is seen as cultural appropriation and that you'd probably judge a white person wearing them.

[Colochita]

Perhaps you didn't mean it, but you specifically said dreadlocks on white people is seen as cultural appropriation and that you'd probably judge a white person wearing them.

I said it is seen as cultural appropriation because that's the reality. There are people who feel that way. I am not one of them. Later on I stated that I wasn't talking about dreadlocks, but I can see how that came across as unclear. I'll state now again that I was not talking about dreadlocks because they have a complex and varied history that is deeply religious.

I will judge a white person with straight hair with dreadlocks because dreadlocks forced to form on straight hair have always looked bad to me, not because the person is white, like I said later on in the post. I have seen black people with dreadlocks that look bad to me too, which I should have mentioned as well. I realize not everything I meant came across properly.

If someone came to treat me in a hospital and they had what I have seen as the sample set for straight-haired people with dreadlocks, unless they were pulled up, I would feel uncomfortable because to me they look bad.

If someone came to treat me who was black with freeformed dreadlocks that I thought looked bad, I would feel uncomfortable as well.

If someone came to treat me with neat locs, I would be completely okay with that. I've never seen neat dreadlocks on a person with straight hair, like I also stated a couple of times.

I am not hating on white people with locs! If your hair looks unkempt to me (regardless of the style) and I'm receiving a professional service from you, I will judge you. That is what I mean to say.

[TR]

Colochita, that does clear things up. I understand now what you meant to say, but your original post seemed to be saying white person equals straight hair equals bad moldy dreadlocks and also that locs on white people is cultural appropriation that you personally would judge against. I'm glad to understand that's not what you meant.

[Colochita]

Colochita, that does clear things up. I understand now what you meant to say, but your original post seemed to be saying white person equals straight hair equals bad moldy dreadlocks and also that locs on white people is cultural appropriation that you personally would judge against. I'm glad to understand that's not what you meant.

When I look at it again I can see how it came across that way and I honestly do apologize for that. I also don't think that all people with straight hair have moldy dreadlocks. To be honest I was a bit irritated at the time because a good friend with locs was being harassed at work with the idea that she must be unclean, smoke weed, etc., when she honestly takes perfect care of herself and her hair.

Hygiene is not an exclusive trait and I realize I also implied that it was. Two wrongs don't make a right, and I admit my comment was mean-spirited.

[chen bao jun]

Wow, I thought this thread would be dead by now. I've been out all day and am surprised to see 3 more pages.

I admire you a lot Colochita for apologizing so graciously; it was big of you to bother to re-read your post to check how it came across.

People will have different opinions. Some of them are based on ignorance, like mine when I said black people's hair does not naturally dread. I should have said, I have not known any black people whose hair naturally dreads, or I am a black person and my hair doesn't naturally dread. I wore a hairstyle for ten years, 2001-2012, which involved sleeping and not detangling unmoisturized hair for like, a week or more at time and I never got anything that was like dreads. and my son tried to get dreads, bought all sorts of wax and other products and didn't succeed. So I was guilty of making assumptions based on a small sampling of people.

Most of the black people I know would never try to get dreads, as they are West Indian or otherwise Caribbean and the hairstyle is associated with Rastafarians there and yes, they are somewhat looked down on, alien to the Caribbean ethos of education, more education, save money, buy land or houses and then save more and buy some more. Which actually sometimes drives me crazy, very acquisitive and materialistic and also very--I don't know how exactly to put it. More value than is usual, even, is I think put towards 'fitting in' and not sticking out, It's almost like groupthink as a community. If anyone is interested in reading something that shows what these communities are like, especially as immigrants to the U.S. there is a great book called 'Brown Girl Brown Stones' by an author named Paule Marshall. It was a revelation to me growing up. People were always recommending books about black life in the US to me or talking about them and asking my opinion on them, and they were always about a very alien culture to me. But the people in BrownGirll Brown STones seemed exactly like my relatives and their friends, scarily so. Marshall doesn't paint a very pleasant pciture. But it is very interesting. The book was written looking back on the 1940's but things haven't changed much. It was the Barbadians and Jamaicans back then, now it is the Haitians and the Dominicans is the only difference that I can see. the Barbadians and Jamaican s having achieved the success they wanted in the US as a community.

I'm not prejudiced against Rastafarians in terms of thinking they are dirty or lazy (just in revolt against the WEst Indian ethos might make them seem that way, but we are talking about people who chase down dirt with a passion I've never seen in anyone else except GErman background people--I used to want to tell my husband to ask my mother in law not to visit becasue she'd threaten me saying my kids would get everything from the plague to I don't know what else, from' all the dirt in my house' if she saw one unwashed dish.). But I do think Rastafarians can be very silly. They have this fantasy version of former black history based on no actual research which is really very odd and while I believe in people being free to make up their own religions if they choose, this think about Haile Selassie being God, or having been God is --interesting. Let me leave it at that. ONe of the most bizarre things I have ever seen was a tv special showing Rastas visiting Ethiopia, which is a like a Holy Land to them. Of course they didn't know the language (which one wouldn't expect) but there they were being shown through some of the most ancient Christian churches in the world (Ethiopia was Christian way before WEstern Europe was converted). the places were most obviously churches, full of icons, crosses, Christian imagery. And they were somehow managing not to notice any of it, being very busy looking for pictures of Haile Selasssie. it was like something out of Gulliver's Travels, like a satire by Jonathan Swift. Or like the Twilight Zone. An amazing example of how people can manage to see only what they come expecting to see. My son was 10 years old and the time and he noticed it too, I had to explain to him that no, they were not crazy. Just s ingle minded.

ETA: My son was the one who wanted to watch the special because he loves Bob Marley. Still does. He hasn't given up on the idea of getting dreadlocks sometime, either.

[chen bao jun]

Kimberly, I mentioned the Polish plait a while back. You should get one. Educate people a bit.

People stay in their own communities and hear only their own history and have no idea what happened to other people. Polish history is very interesting and very sad--but there have been some amazing people and accomplishments in it. Last year I enjoyed reading Sienkiewicz's Trilogy. Someone in LHC had mentioned it, actaully--because of the hair. Apparently there was a movie and it showed the heroine of the first book with her very very long hair. And I remembered that Polish friends of mine had mentioned this as a great book, 25 years ago, when they immigrated just after the Iron Curtain fell, so I decided to finally read it and I loved it.

On that note, I have to say, I was a little stunned to hear Kim Kardashian referred to (I think it was by Colochita) earlier in this thread as if she were a white person. I guess she is technically a white person--but she's an Armenian. Her family were Armenian holocaust victims and its something she's trying to raise awareness of (one of the few things she seems serious about in an intelligent kind of way). This was a terrible genocide and the culmination of years and years of oppression. It's like, everybody has their story if you take the time to stop and listen and its often not what you would expect.

[Hairkay]

Wow, I thought this thread would be dead by now. I've been out all day and am surprised to see 3 more pages.......

I'm not prejudiced against Rastafarians in terms of thinking they are dirty or lazy (just in revolt against the WEst Indian ethos might make them seem that way, but we are talking about people who chase down dirt with a passion I've never seen in anyone else except GErman background people--I used to want to tell my husband to ask my mother in law not to visit becasue she'd threaten me saying my kids would get everything from the plague to I don't know what else, from' all the dirt in my house' if she saw one unwashed dish.). But I do think Rastafarians can be very silly. They have this fantasy version of former black history based on no actual research which is really very odd and while I believe in people being free to make up their own religions if they choose, this think about Haile Selassie being God, or having been God is --interesting. Let me leave it at that. ONe of the most bizarre things I have ever seen was a tv special showing Rastas visiting Ethiopia, which is a like a Holy Land to them. Of course they didn't know the language (which one wouldn't expect) but there they were being shown through some of the most ancient Christian churches in the world (Ethiopia was Christian way before WEstern Europe was converted). the places were most obviously churches, full of icons, crosses, Christian imagery. And they were somehow managing not to notice any of it, being very busy looking for pictures of Haile Selasssie. it was like something out of Gulliver's Travels, like a satire by Jonathan Swift. Or like the Twilight Zone. An amazing example of how people can manage to see only what they come expecting to see. My son was 10 years old and the time and he noticed it too, I had to explain to him that no, they were not crazy. Just s ingle minded.

ETA: My son was the one who wanted to watch the special because he loves Bob Marley. Still does. He hasn't given up on the idea of getting dreadlocks sometime, either.

According to some of the locals in Ethiopia Selassie was a dictator. Letting hair form locks was a political protest against Ras Tafari being exiled. His followers refused to cut and comb their hair until he returned. Some interested Jamaicans made contact in Ethiopia and Selassie granted them land that belonged to other people without these people's consent. Some stayed but others found life too hard there and returned to Jamaica. They took on the name Ras which is really a royalty title. It's like calling someone Sir. I know havesha that won't call any Rasta by that name because to them that would be granting them an unearned title. A few I've seen have taken up dreadlocks as a hair style though most don't. I haven't seen an older generation person with their hair like that. I'm aware of the Coptics (orthodox Christians). There are some in the Caribbean though they are a small group.

Dreadlocks as a style especially well groomed small ones is becoming more and more accepted to average Caribbean people in some of the islands. Some years ago there was a big uproar when a school attempted to refuse to let a girl attend with dreadlocks unless she got rid of them. In the end the school let her in as she was. I noticed that there were more people with the hairstyle around than when I was growing up. Then it was mostly just the rastas that stayed in their small groups. Many ran their own small businesses (agriculture, catering/street vendors, small shops, arts and crafts) so they didn't have to conform to cutting off their hair for general employment. It became more popular when the top musicians began sporting the hairstyles. I'd personally know of some shoe makers and street food vendors whilst growing up.

[Knifegill]

There are longstanding myths, though, especially among the people I grew up with, that dreadlocks have to be dirty to work, that you can never wash them. Literally, to make them, you have to stop washing them and just wait, lol. So backwards from what I've learned since. And there is ALWAYS - I mean ALWAYS somebody who pops up to tell the spider story. But we have the internet now, so maybe that was a 90's thing. I'm old, so my data is from the great before time.

[TR]

There are longstanding myths, though, especially among the people I grew up with, that dreadlocks have to be dirty to work, that you can never wash them. Literally, to make them, you have to stop washing them and just wait, lol. So backwards from what I've learned since. And there is ALWAYS - I mean ALWAYS somebody who pops up to tell the spider story. But we have the internet now, so maybe that was a 90's thing. I'm old, so my data is from the great before time.

Ha ha ha, if that were true I bet the no water / sebum only thread here on LHC would look a lot different! "Help, my hair is in locs and I don't want them!" It's too bad that some people will look at obviously clean and well-cared-for dreadlocks and still somehow think the person is dirty. Poor homeless guy begging on the street with unintentional dreads and obvious hygiene challenges, ok, but tidy locs on a well-groomed person? It's strange to me that someone would look at such a person and think he or she must be dirty or at least have dirty hair.

ETA: Upon re-reading I thought it might have come across that I think NW/SO means dirty hair, but I'm fully aware that successful NW/SO results in perfectly clean hair and scalp.

[chen bao jun]

Hairkay, I'm always glad when you chime in and talk about what's current in the Caribbean. Caribbean culture in the US and Caribbean culture in the actual Caribbean are two related but different things. Immigrants a) idealize and just in general remember wrong and b) fossilize--the culture that they knew passes on or at least evolves and they still think people are doing things exactly like when they left and teach their kids that. then when you go there, you find its all wrong. Or at least not modern. The internet and especially facebook helps a lot with avoiding some of this.

Also a lot of cultures in the US get very 'non-specific' if that makes sense. Just like Koreans and Japanese and Chinese Americans tend to think of themselves all as 'Asian' at least for the purposes of forming clubs at colleges (and the further they are removed in terms of being 2nd or 3rd generation the more vague they get about a specific culture), later generation people in the US tend to think of themselves as 'West Indian', as opposed to 'Jamaican' 'Bajan' 'Trini' and so forth and think of themselves as having much more distinctly different accents, food, culture than West Indian Americans do. I'm from none of those places by the way, though I have close relatives in some of them.

Hairkay, I'm glad you know about the Ethiopian Christians, now that there are more Ethiopian immigrants they are getting somewhat better known but I think many Caucasian people have never heard of them and obviously a whole bunch of people of African descent have not, or they could not go around talking about how Christianity is 'the white man's religion' (something I still hear an amazing amount of the time). People are not aware here of the different Orthodox churches in general, I think, unless they are Greek or Russian background and the Ethiopian Orthodox church gets forgotten a whole lot, except by scholars, since the texts in Ethiopic are such important early witnesses of the Bible. Once in while there's some information about it, like for instance I remember a tv show sometime in the last few years where they went around to monasteries there and talked about the manuscripts, especially the illuminated manuscripts which they now know are much much earlier (in some cases) than used to be thought.

I didn't say Coptic, though they are, to distinguish them from the Coptic church in Egypt, which is related but not the same. And of course got very very different when the Egypt was conquered in the Muslim invasions of the 7th/8th centuries, along with the rest of North African and Spain and the Christians became a minority, persecuted religion there--but Ethiopia was not conquered. Just cut off from the rest of Christianity for the next thousand years which makes them unique in some ways, but of course they are not different in any essentials of doctrine, Christian doctrine does not vary from place to place or time to time, which gets really obvious when you become aware of these ancient Christians in various places which aren't too well known in the US where Western European Christianity is all people seem to be aware of.

Yes, I heard (read) that Haile Selassie was actually very oppressive but was not sure if that was true or not, being that I heard/read that while a Communist revolution was being attempted in Ethiopia. They always say that the regime in power is oppressive. Sometimes its true. But then when they come in, they're always worse. I think it didn't succeed, but get very confused about the troubles there in the last 40 years and the founding of Eritrea, etc so that may be wrong. I do know that he was not from a very ancient dynasty as he claimed, since his father? grandfather? had staged a coup in the 19th century to get power?

He was very much admired by my parent's generation (people born in the 1920's and 1930's) because they remember him coming in front of the League of Nation and asking for justice as concerned the Italian invasion (Mussolini) sometime in the 1930's. and they saw the footage of the italian tanks going against the Ethiopian mounted calvary, which is still quite distressing to see. But what impressed people of color all over the world, I know, was that at that time, they all believed the lies that African has no ancient civilizations and had no cultures before the Europeans showed up. My mother says she had actually been taught in schools that Africans lived in trees (and this was in a majority black country, with black teachers). Then they saw this man, an Emperor, living in an ancient city, in a palace, obviously not someone that you could be any means or stretch call a 'native chief' (in those days it was often, 'cannibal chief'), he was definitely an 'Emperor' and it was like, its not true what we have been being told...

AFter that the story was for a while that West Africans from the area where there was slave trading had no civilization. When I teach about ancient West AFrican cultures right now, in fact, in 2013, 2014, the big reaction not just from the students and their parents is, Why haven't we heard ever about these things? In black neighborhoods they now know that Africa had ancient kingdoms but tend to have very vague ideas about it and will spent more time fighting you arguing that the ancient Egyptians were black people, in the sense that we understand 'black' in the US than in exhibiting any knowledge about what was in in the Gold Coast and the Bight of Guinea in the 1453 when the Eastern European slave trade dried up suddenly because of the fall of Constantinople and a new source of slaves was needed AND Prince Henry's students navigated around the rest of AFrica (not just what had been known to the Romans) AND the Americas were discovered and enormous numbers of slaves were suddenly REALLY needed so that the discoverers could get rich quick. The perfect storm that birthed the African slave trade and the Middle passage. And modern ideas about 'race' with it.

But people always have to lie about history when they are oppressing people. When Henry II invaded Ireland, suddenly the Irish began to be considered to be uncivilized. The Irish, who Charlemagne had called over their monks to teach his court to read and write, they were on such a high level, centuries earlier. And when the Poles got their nation divided into 3 parts and given to other countries so that Poland disappeared off the map--suddenly they were uncivilized barbarians also who had no culture and the Russians, Austrians and I forget who the 3rd groups was, were explaining they HAD to swallow up Poland to civilize them. Its always the same thing. Nobody ever admits to conquering and enslaving and oppressing other people just because its convenient, or its possible or they just WANT to. They always claim a higher motive. And after a couple of generations of being oppressed enough, you don't look very civilized anymore and people start to believe the propaganda. At that point, with the upper class and the educated killed, and the books destroyed and the ancient cities in ruins, people start making up stories about why there are ruins--Martians from outer space built those old cities, not these degraded slaves who are serving us--can't you see that they would never be capable of such a thing?

[chen bao jun]

So OT, I'm embarassed, I will stop now, really. Back to dreadlocks...

[Hairkay]

So OT, I'm embarassed, I will stop now, really. Back to dreadlocks...

LOL, you sound like my mother. It was she who first taught me about African history.

Selassie's descendant did a tour of the Caribbean over a decade ago. Rastas lined up expecting a rasta to be greeting them. They were in for a shock when a man with short cut hair appeared. Some complained that they were offended. It hadn't occurred to them that dreadlocks was not a common hair style in Ethiopia. It exists but it isn't the average hair style.

Barbados, a place that used to ban cornrows and plaits in work places, will now allow children in school with dreadlocks but it must be neat and tied back. Boys must have theirs covered up for some reason. I haven't heard of other islands expected the hair to be covered up.

My current view of the Caribbean is still considered out of date for the next generation coming out of there.

[meteor]

So OT, I'm embarassed, I will stop now, really. Back to dreadlocks...

I, for one, hope you won't stop, chen. ;) I'm loving your history-filled, informative posts a lot! Great stuff! :applause

[chen bao jun]

You guys are patient and nice. Thanks, Meteor and Hairkay.
Hairkay, I'm very likely your mom's age, I was born in 1957.

[jazzhands]

I honestly wouldn't judge a person by their appearance unless it's something ridiculously extreme. Dreads can look lovely if taken care of properly, my cousin has them because they help hide her bald patches (alopecia) and she looks adorable :)

[calmyogi]

I, for one, hope you won't stop, chen. ;) I'm loving your history-filled, informative posts a lot! Great stuff! :applause

Yeah, your responses are have been really educational Chen. I was really surprised this morning when I clicked in and found it second in line for most recently commented on and 108 comments, as well lol.

[Unicorn]

What you just said about dreadlocks is EXACTLY how I feel. I don't understand how one race can claim them because they are just an example of hair not being combed, or purposely being formed into them. I have tossed the idea back and forth in my head about starting them but my husband is very afraid it could affect my career options in the future. I have various reasons I would want them, the biggest being I'm cheap and lazy and don't like the upkeep of trims and worrying about mechanical damage to my hair, but I also don't want to have short hair either. I also think they look kinda earthy and show a detachment to worrying about your looks, without, again, having to shave your head.

I believe the rastas only started it so they could single themselves out because they thought of themselves as the "dreaded" humans... or something, i'm not sure if my interpretation is completley correct. They did it to make other races turn their heads, not because their hair did it naturally.

Edit: When I say lazy I don't mean that I don't want to fuss with my hair at all, I just don't like putting money into styling and cutting it, why not let it do what it wants is my philosophy.

I'm not going to try to address the long list of points made in this thread, but regarding Rastafarians and locs, the reason for Rastafarians developing locs is about abandoning vanity and taking on the Nazarene tradition. Nazarenes grow out their hair and do not put "sharp objects" to their hair. I.e. no cuts no trims. Rastafarians traditionally regard combs as "sharp objects" therefore do not comb their hair.

Abandoning of vanity, is translated by most early Rastafarians as letting the hair do whatever it does naturally, with grooming being limited to washing. Afro textured hair under such circumstances turn into what we dreadlocks. The rubbing motion of washing tends to stop it turning into one big mat and produces many locs, though these can join together as the locs gain length if they're not pulled apart fairly regularly. So no they didn't do it to make other races turn their heads. Not everything is about "other races", nor are "other races" always the priority. Sometimes people's lives are about them, black or otherwise.

The "dread" in dreadlocks, it is said, came about from Europeans seeing locs and describing the overall look of those sporting them as "dreadful".

Personally I don't have a problem with other races having locs, though I understand why it bothers some black people. If anyone wants locs, I say go ahead and have them, as several people have indicted, attitude rather than the hair is what makes it offensive, inoffensive or complimentary.

As a British born person of West Indian parents, I am very aware that my history means I have no country. Nowhere I can call home. Britain is the only country I've ever lived in, but I'm made aware of my stranger status almost every day. Me and my kind are only tolerated by a significant percentage of the population. The reality is, that tolerance can be withdrawn at any point, ask any Muslim.

My parents weren't native West Indians (the original natives died out) so having never lived there, I cannot claim it as my home. I've no familial connection to Africa, which is the continent of my primary genetic origin. My genetic mix, another legacy of black history, means I don't even belong to a specific race. I've just picked one to identify with. Most Black Americans live with these same truths.

These things are my life from cradle to grave, there is no other option. I live on a planet on which I have no home. I can understand why this would lead some people to be possessive of their cultural traits when their physical form is the only culture they have been left with. For those whose privilege allows them to be dismissive of those truths, congratulations on your good fortune.

Unicorn

[Unicorn]

I just know the people I knew that made sure they were completely dry didn't have problems with mold. I'm curious why only a straighter texture hair would get mold and not other textures? I would think they would all mold, its all human hair.

Most of the websites I've read about for creating locs on European hair, includes the use of wax or other product. This gets trapped in the hair as it mats and holds water in the hair so it almost never drys properly, hence the mildew/mold. It happened with a lot of black people too when cultivated (as opposed to organic) locs increased in popularity as they were also advised to use wax etc. With the longer history of (organic) locs, I guess black people had/have a wider pool of reference to help dismiss the wax myth.

One of the reasons I have such tiny locs, is I wanted to be sure my very thick hair would be able to dry completely between washes. It's also one of several reasons I use henna, it has a clarifying effect on the hair. Although I don't use any wax and never have, I do use a little oil on the length.

Unicorn

[Unicorn]

Oh, I realize the dandruff problem and dreads were unrelated! It's just that the whole effect of matted hair and skin flakes (plus his hair was blonde, so everything was noticeable) really grossed me out. On the other hand, there's a kid in my art class who has neat, even, pencil thin, shoulder length dreads which look very nice and don't gross me out at all. He's black (and I have no info at all about his race/ethnicity/cultural background at all, so I'm just going by looks), which is only reinforcing my idea that dreadlocks work a lot better on black people than white people in general.

Dandruff is never flattering, the the way locs separate, really doesn't help an already undesirable situation. Before I put my hair in locs, I spent a year of doing a final ACV rinse every time I washed, in order to deal with my dandruff. It worked!! ;)


Unicorn

[Hairkay]

I'm not going to try to address the long list of points made in this thread, but regarding Rastafarians and locs, the reason for Rastafarians developing locs is about abandoning vanity and taking on the Nazarene tradition. Nazarenes grow out their hair and do not put "sharp objects" to their hair. I.e. no cuts no trims. Rastafarians traditionally regard combs as "sharp objects" therefore do not comb their hair........

As a British born person of West Indian parents, I am very aware that my history means I have no country. Nowhere I can call home. Britain is the only country I've ever lived in, but I'm made aware of my stranger status almost every day. Me and my kind are only tolerated by a significant percentage of the population. The reality is, that tolerance can be withdrawn at any point, ask any Muslim.

My parents weren't native West Indians (the original natives died out) so having never lived there, I cannot claim it as my home. I've no familial connection to Africa, which is the continent of my primary genetic origin. My genetic mix, another legacy of black history, means I don't even belong to a specific race. I've just picked one to identify with. Most Black Americans live with these same truths.

Unicorn
Hi Unicorn. My sis has locks. She asked others for advice before she started. She started with little plaits/braids, twisting the new growth as it came in.

I claim the Caribbean because I grew up there. Not all the indigenous people known as taino/carib/arawak/kalina/karifuna/Garifuna/Ciboney died out. There are remnants that survived. Most are now mixed African and or European and or Asian. Dominica has a Carib reservation where Caribs live today.

Europeans declared the indigenous people officially dead when people lost their language and or mixed with others. This made the survivors invisible and non existent.

See here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carib_Territory


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o60l9ay41sg

The Garifuna are thought to be a mix because they were darkest but the time line is wrong. I went to visit the old Fort in St. Vincent's capital which is now a museum. There were European artists depiction of the people. They called them black Caribs. The time line they have is just over a decade for a mixed people to come into being. Today they are now certainly mixed. Most of the surviving ones were exiled to dessert lands in Belize and nearby countries in central American because they caused too much trouble for the European conquerors. When I told my mother about them she told me we have a Garifuna ancestor. She had learnt that from my great aunt. Trinidad has the Santa Rosa Carib community. The Spanish converted them to Catholicism. Most of their traditions today are Catholic and Spanish. They still choose a representative head of the Community, with the tittle of Carib queen.

A lot of our neighbours where we lived looked like those Dominicans. They're Carib mixes. I hadn't realised that until I stupidly said that I'd never seen a Carib. Mother told me don't be ridiculous what did I think the neighbours and my friends were. I had been visualising those pictures in history text books. The ones with naked people with or without loin cloths. With flattened foreheads because they purposely bound newborn babies' foreheads to planks to make the forehead grow flattened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna_people

http://santarosafirstpeoples.org/

Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico have people trying to revive indigenous peoples' communities even if some the people who want to do so have a small percentage of indigenous blood.

[chen bao jun]

Hi Unicorn. My sis has locks. She asked others for advice before she started. She started with little plaits/braids, twisting the new growth as it came in.

I claim the Caribbean because I grew up there. Not all the indigenous people known as taino/carib/arawak/kalina/karifuna/Garifuna/Ciboney died out. There are remnants that survived. Most are now mixed African and or European and or Asian. Dominica has a Carib reservation where Caribs live today.

Europeans declared the indigenous people officially dead when people lost their language and or mixed with others. This made the survivors invisible and non existent.

See here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carib_Territory


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o60l9ay41sg

The Garifuna are thought to be a mix because they were darkest but the time line is wrong. I went to visit the old Fort in St. Vincent's capital which is now a museum. There were European artists depiction of the people. They called them black Caribs. The time line they have is just over a decade for a mixed people to come into being. Today they are now certainly mixed. Most of the surviving ones were exiled to dessert lands in Belize and nearby countries in central American because they caused too much trouble for the European conquerors. When I told my mother about them she told me we have a Garifuna ancestor. She had learnt that from my great aunt. Trinidad has the Santa Rosa Carib community. The Spanish converted them to Catholicism. Most of their traditions today are Catholic and Spanish. They still choose a representative head of the Community, with the tittle of Carib queen.

A lot of our neighbours where we lived looked like those Dominicans. They're Carib mixes. I hadn't realised that until I stupidly said that I'd never seen a Carib. Mother told me don't be ridiculous what did I think the neighbours and my friends were. I had been visualising those pictures in history text books. The ones with naked people with or without loin cloths. With flattened foreheads because they purposely bound newborn babies' foreheads to planks to make the forehead grow flattened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna_people

http://santarosafirstpeoples.org/

Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico have people trying to revive indigenous peoples' communities even if some the people who want to do so have a small percentage of indigenous blood.

Thanks for posting, Hairkay. This is absolutely correct. If you count the continent (Latin America or Central and South America, whichever you choose to call it) there are plenty of indigenous people left. They even often still speak their languages and have preserved their cultures, though some of them have assimilated enough to speak Spanish or English (or Dutch or whatever the official 'European' language of the country they live in.

Its a very interesting topic.

Again, this is a problem of Caribbean history being very little known and people extrapolating that what happened in the US is what happened all over. In the US there are small remnants of indigenous people, often in reservations. This is not the case south of the border. i remember telling my father when I learned it in school that the Maya people, for instance, had 'disappeared' when I learned that in school and how he stared at me. He was like, what do you mean disappeared? They are still all over the place in the countries where they had their city-states and still speak Maya langu--ages (there are several of these languages). I said, but their culture fell and nobody knows why--and their cities are in ruins. He was like, yes, their culture fell because Europeans came and conquered them in the 16th century and they fought like heck. And they still had cities when my dad (my father's dad, my grandfather) was alive. They deserted some cities but moved to others.

So I went to talk to my teacher and she said, Your father is crazy, all the scholars say, blah blah blah. I'm like, Yeah, he's just FROM there. So he knows nothing, of course.

Twenty years later I was sitting in a seminar at an Ivy League university (this was around 1990) and the scholars had caught up with what my dad and every other darn person from the area knew and were finally talking about the Maya cities that survived into the 19th century, and how long the Maya fought the Europeans, and how the Caste Wars in the Yucatan were Maya wars, and about the talking cross religion that is a mix of Catholicism and Maya religion that the rebels followed. At that time there were 'troubles' in Guatemala that were kind of vaguely in the US newspapers. Ten years later they are admitting that these were essentially Maya rebellions--a good 300 years after the conquest, and 1,000 years after the Maya 'classic' civilization collapsed and supposedly left nothing.

IN the 2000s Mel Gibson made a movie, Apocalypto (hugely popular with Latin Americans but I can find hardly any one else who's seen it, like all Mel Gibson movies it is definitely graphic and bloody)--and this movie is all spoken in Maya. I believe it is the Kekchi dialect, but not quite sure. He found plenty of native speakers to teach the actors how to speak it, because it is a living language from a culture that is very much alive and not even underground or anything, though of course the governments in the area are trying very hard to assimilate the full-blooded Maya into speaking European languages and getting European educations and fitting in to the society.

This is just one example of several indigenous cultures that are far from wiped out, although they have been conquered, yes.

The scholars have done a 180 and switched from only Europe has a culture worth studying, every other culture is backwards and need to be Europeanized and knowing nothing about other cultures than European (when I was a kid), to European culture is evil, it has oppressed and destroyed all these other wonderful native cultures because it is uniquely evil and European culture is not worth studying, but all these cultures are--in the versions that they create and make up, often for some current political reason (this is why we hear all the time that all these other cultures were nice to the environment, had matriarchal cultures that valued women, were freer about sex and had better marriage models that were more inclusive, etc. Never, or rarely, with real evidence and sometimes in actual contradiction of the evidence.) Its not only a switch that is about as truthful as the old version (not true at all) but it STILL puts Europe at the center of history, though this time as a destructive force rather than as a civilizing one. It still makes Europeans and people of European descent (America. Australia) the most important kind of people in the world, though as ones who bear all this (supposedly unique) guilt. And there is still this appalling ignorance about everybody else, now lumped together as 'the oppressed' (or just simply 'non-white' or 'people of color') rather than as 'savages' (noble or otherwise).

It is BS.

[Unicorn]

Thank you for the post HairKay, I'll pop back when I've had a full read/viewing. My parents are from Jamaica, I was under the impression the Arawaks had died out. It's good to know there are still indigenous people in the Caribbean, I thought they'd only survived in the Americas. You're quite an education on this thread. :blossom:

I spent about 18 months researching before I had my own locs started, as Sisterlocks. The research and advice given, definitely paid off. For those wanting thicker locs, the braid locking method your sister used sounds the best to my mind.

Unicorn

[Deborah]

I dislike dreadlocks on anyone, of any race. I think they are extremely unattractive. It's just a matter of taste I think. Some things we like; others we don't.

[elsieivy]

So, I've debated off and on for years the idea of putting a few smalls dreads in the underlayer of my hair. The biggest thing that has put me off is the concerns about cultural appropriation. I'm not Black and I'm not Rastafarian. I know dreadlocks have been common in a variety of cultures over the years, but they are currently strongly associated with Jamaicans and African Americans (at least in the area where I live). I've read pieces noting the difference in treatment that white people with dreadlocks are give as opposed to African Americans with dreadlocks. I don't want to contribute to that system.

Anyway, despite all my concerns, a few weeks ago I put three small 'locs into my hair using the latching method. All are in the underlayer and not really visible. If seen at all they sort of look like accent braids. I really love them and seeing them makes me smile, but I can't shake the concern that they could be hurting someone else.

I'm not looking for permission, just thoughts. I've already done a lot of reading on this and read a lot of conflicting answers. I'm asking here partly because this is hair related and partly because I like and feel comfortable on this forum. I don't want anyone to feel obligated to reply or anything but I certainly would appreciate it. (They were put in recently so they should still be pretty easily removable.) So long story short: what are your thoughts on dreads, particularly one or two small dreads on someone who is white? Thank you for reading

[Entangled]

There was a great thread about a month ago on dreadlocks. I'll see if I can find it.

ETA: Here it is!
http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=135346&highlight=Dreadlocks

[elsieivy]

There was a great thread about a month ago on dreadlocks. I'll see if I can find it.

ETA: Here it is!
http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=135346&highlight=Dreadlocks

Very interesting read, thank you for finding it. Mod's feel free to merge my thread with that :)

[Nini]

I'm more used to seeing dreads on white, Swedish folk musicians than anyone else around here actually. I didn't see all that many while living out on Long Island for a year either, to be fair that was a white upper middle class neighbourhood though.

Today I think it's more about respecting where it came from, while realising that the world has become rather small and is ever shrinking.

[spidermom]

I was much younger, but here's what I thought (and think) about cultural appropriation: bah humbug! Because of Jimi Hendrix and Angela Davis, when I was about 19 I thought that the Afro was the most beautiful thing in the whole world. I would roll my white girl shag haircut on small sponge rollers and plop a big brunette Afro wig over them. When my hair got dry (about 36 hours), I'd pick it out into my own Afro. Loved loved loved it and never caught any flack. The earth is a big melting pot of culture these days, and I think sharing is good. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

[Seeshami]

I agree that cultural appropriation is a bah humbug.

I shouldn't belly dance.
I shouldn't wear the cloths I like.
I shouldn't get henna.
I really shouldn't do anything at all because my blood is so mixed I don't get to qualify to a culture. Oh and my religious beliefs are so not culturally acceptable to what little family culture I have. So if cultural appropriation is the worst thing in the whole wide world I should just cease existing because EVERYTHING I love was given to me by a culture that wasn't mine but accepts me and allows me to celebrate it.

[rhosyn_du]

I've read pieces noting the difference in treatment that white people with dreadlocks are give as opposed to African Americans with dreadlocks. I don't want to contribute to that system.

This is the main reason I personally would not consider having locs. Not because of some nebulous theory, but because I have personally observed how much more harshly African American women with locs are judged for their hair than white women with locs are around here. The difference is especially jarring because locs on white women have only been a trend here in the past decade or so, while African American women have been wearing them since I was a kid. I think locs can be really beautiful, but I'm not going to intentionally do something that will likely get me praised for being edgy and trendy when other women are being called dirty and unprofessional for exactly the same thing because of a difference in our skin colors.

[PristineAllure]

I never looked at a white person with dreads and thought cultural appropriation, but now that it is pointed out. I can definitely see why. I honestly, just looked at white people with dreads as people who were modern day hippies or spiritual people with a care free vibe. Would I take them less seriously? Nope. I wouldn't look at them negatively at all. Unless the assumption of spirituality is negative? But I will say that I do think that it looks more beautiful and neater on African American hair. On looser and silkier hair types it tends to look forced and dirty. It just seems natural and neat when I see African Americans with dreads. But it could be that I've just never seen someone with a looser texture who knows how to take care of the dreads? I don't know.

[mindwiped]

PristineAllure- I think the tightness difference you maybe seeing could be because many of the African American dreads you've seen could be weaves/extensions/some type of not grown hair tech which will henceforth be referred to as 'fake', or at least will be so from me in the rest of this post. Many of my African American coworkers' hair is fake. I'm going to be honest here, until I took the job I have currently, which I obtained when I was in my mid thirties, I had no clue how much of the hair I've seen on African American women was fake. I'd been so jealous of their hair, how nice it looked at waist length and how little taper it had. And these were hairstyles nice enough to not look like the extensions I'd seen, so I'd never even thought they could be fake. Then one coworker went from natural looking, approx one inch of volume afro (probably 6 inches of length) to straight, waist length, loose hair overnight, which is when I started asking questions of the coworker who knew me well enough to know it was genuine curiosity, and not an attempt to be racist, that had me asking questions. So she explained a lot about her hair, what she does, and why. I'm not nearly as jealous now. Hopefully that will give you a little food for thought on a factor in the dread differences.

[PristineAllure]

PristineAllure- I think the tightness difference you maybe seeing could be because many of the African American dreads you've seen could be weaves/extensions/some type of not grown hair tech which will henceforth be referred to as 'fake', or at least will be so from me in the rest of this post. Many of my African American coworkers' hair is fake. I'm going to be honest here, until I took the job I have currently, which I obtained when I was in my mid thirties, I had no clue how much of the hair I've seen on African American women was fake. I'd been so jealous of their hair, how nice it looked at waist length and how little taper it had. And these were hairstyles nice enough to not look like the extensions I'd seen, so I'd never even thought they could be fake. Then one coworker went from natural looking, approx one inch of volume afro (probably 6 inches of length) to straight, waist length, loose hair overnight, which is when I started asking questions of the coworker who knew me well enough to know it was genuine curiosity, and not an attempt to be racist, that had me asking questions. So she explained a lot about her hair, what she does, and why. I'm not nearly as jealous now. Hopefully that will give you a little food for thought on a factor in the dread differences.

I have MANY African-American friends, and yes a lot of African-American women do wear extensions, but there are MANY that do not. Also, African-American hair dreads BEAUTIFULLY with their natural hair texture. To say that African-Americans have beautiful dreads because you are insinuating that they are fake is laughable. Their hair texture suits that hairstyle, in fact I have many African-American friends who say that their hair just naturally locks up. Their hair will always look beautiful with dreads. And there are MANY African American women with long beautiful hair. I surely hope you're not walking around with a superiority complex and assuming that all African-American women are wearing weaves or wigs? Because that's simply not the case. Here are some videos and pictures of African American women with long natural hair. And if you believe that their hair is fake, watch the video, and you will see that it is their real hair. No extensions, wigs, weaves, or clip ins. My closest friend is African-American and she deals with these stereotypes all the time, and honestly I've learned a LOT from her. And she also taught me that many African-American women who wear fake hair, have been brainwashed by society to believe that their hair does not grow as fast as other races, and that is NOT-TRUE. All hair grows on average at 1/2 an inch per month, but many African-American women have permed their hair or damaged it in others ways, attempting to make it look like what is deemed "acceptable" in the media. So it keeps them from retaining their length, because their hair grows as fast as it breaks off. BUT when they DON'T damage it, and take care of it properly, deep conditioning it, oil treatments, etc. it grows just as fast and as beautifully and as healthy and JUST-AS-LONG-AND-BEAUTIFUL as women of other races. Now, here is a disclaimer: I hope I have no offended anyone, and I know I cannot speak for African-Americans, but my close friend is African-American and I have witnessed her natural hair journey, and I remember in junior high when she had short permed hair and weaves, and I saw she cut off her damaged hair and grew her natural hair LONG and healthy. So I don't think that anyone should ever have a superiority complex. EVERYONE is equal, and EVERYONE can grow long beautiful hair.

https://youtu.be/vJirdKniUho

http://cdn.styleblazer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/photo-1-48.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/c0/b3/a3/c0b3a3892b886591ba0c1703ea5c8bf2.jpg
http://photos.essence.com/sites/default/files/images/2013/09/09/franchesca-ramsey_347x520_54.jpg
http://community.blackhairinformation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/image38-e1407024635210.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e5/41/b3/e541b33ecdeb338dd29bcf81de39d61d.jpg
http://data.whicdn.com/images/69256804/large.png
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0068/6632/files/143a6b3ed746ceab2d37416966d2c7e3_large.jpg
http://cdn.styleblazer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/urban-bush-babes-street-style-1.jpg
http://cdn.styleblazer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/urban-bush-babes-street-style-2.jpg

https://youtu.be/pDK0pyOQ2bM

https://youtu.be/0xwlT8w8VzM

[mindwiped]

These ladies' hair are gorgeous! And yes, I freely admit I don't have much knowledge of African American hair, but wanted to at least put out the solution that most of my African American coworkers use. I know that not ALL African American women use some form of hair other than their own, however, almost every one of my co-workers do. And I know this because there is no way their hair could go from waist length multi-colored dreads to shoulder length, completely different colors straight hair to BSL braids in a third different set of colors in the course of a month, repeat this for at least a year, and not show any damage at all. Also, the one coworker flat out told me that they were using a non-natural hair item.

And I hope that nothing I wrote made you think that I felt that my hair was better than anybody else's, that was not my intent. I'm sorry if anybody was upset with how I phrased my easier post. I will admit that knowing they were managing to change their hair so dramatically without damage was due to it being different non-hair solutions made me feel better about my taper and damage.

I also admit that I've never had the opportunity to look closely at a set of natural dreads next to a set of the extension/wig variety that I see at work. Nor do I have the chance to get up real close to most of my coworkers, simply to see how the various differences. The coworker that I'm close enough to be able to ask stopped using other hair items and is wearing her hair natural now. I've gotten to watch as her hair gets longer each month, which is fun, because she hadn't let her hair be natural without having some sort of wig/weave so she's having fun seeing it grow.

[Sarahlabyrinth]

Wow. those ladies' hair in the photos is amazing. I hate to think how it is being damaged with the flat ironing though.

Personally I see no harm in anybody wearing dreadlocks or any other hair style if they like it. I don't think they would be choosing to offend anyone, and these days it seems that people choose to be offended by things which in the greater scheme of things on this planet, things such as hair styles are irrelevant. Get mad over abuse, crimes, violence, war, famine - not hair styles....

I have been enjoying this thread very much. My personal view of dreadlocks is that I like the skinny ones, the fat ones, not so much. But it actually doesn't matter a jot what I think. :)

[Hairkay]

The pictures are great. The twins don't have dreadlocks, it's very loose twists left to fuzz up a bit. They actually take the time to unloose the whole lot (hundreds of twists) and redo them at intervals. I don't know how long they leave them in.

I do know some people that have used extensions but most stick with their own hair whatever the length. In the UK lately many use extensions, and that's not limited to black people, in fact it became popular by non black people first. Look up the term Essex girl, known for wearing a tonne of make up, fake tans, long hair extensions (waist length most popular) and high heels or high heeled boots. It's just that those that take to this style or life style have no patience to wait for hair to grow and they want dramatic instant change over night, for different hair colours, natural or unnatural, to different hair lengths and hair types.

Those I know with dreadlocks took their time to grow their hair like that. It takes years to get it down your back if you start from a twa. I didn't learn that it was possible to have fake dreadlocks until last year. I don't think I've seen this in person because looking at the pictures of the fake ones I can tell the difference from the real thing. The fake ones are too regular at the roots, some are too shiny. Real ones look more organic at the roots.

Here's some fake locs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGXzwIEMdew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_nSfB2eKkY

done with yarn these look fluffy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYLfJG-EbqM

Here's real locs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY7-jfbPFEI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhdHp3Ti5Vs

sister locs, a type of mirco loc using your own hair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb-U0_paHOA

[AJNinami]

I'm not quite sure about anything dreadlocks, but don't all of your shed hairs get trapped inside the dread allowing it to thicken and go past your terminal length?

[Unicorn]

mindwiped; I suspect the extensions you're refering to are braided extensions. These are pretty common as are loose [hair] extentions. Locs from fake hair aren't very common at all, as Hairkay indicated. None black people are constantly telling me they like my braids/plaits. (I have locs) Many seem unable to differenciate between small braids and locs.

Regarding any cultural appropriation aspect... Life's too short and too many cultures have had locs for me to care or claim ownership for any hair not on my head.

ETA: That's right AJNinami

Unicorn

[chen bao jun]

This thread is an education. I had no idea that there was such a thing as fake dreadlocks. But then, I'm the one who thought black people's hair didn't naturally dread and had to get corrected on that some pages back.

I don't really have anything to add of interest this time, I think Unicorn and Hairkay should carry on, Unicorn having beautiful dreadlocks herself and i believe Hairkay's brother has them? Only one statement struck me as kind of odd--or at least not very well thought out. PristineAllure, you wrote that 'Everyone is equal and everyone can grow long natural hair'.

Aren't we equal if we can't grow long natural hair?

It's obviously not true that everyone can grow long natural hair, even if you don't think there are racial differences.

What if it was true that people of African descent mostly couldn't grow hair as long as Caucasian people, or people of Asian descent would that make us not equal? That doesn't make sense. I wouldn't think your ability to grow hair would make you equal or less equal at all. Everybody is equal because we are all human beings and those of us on this forum enjoy growing our hair, but I would hope no one thought that, let's say, LadyLongLocks or Gossamer or the the other genetically blessed people over in the floor length hair thread are more equal than the rest of us, even if most of us will never get to floor length.

Equality means, equal under the law and in society (allowing for reasonable distinctions)* not that we are all the same, or genetically can manage the same things.



*When I say, reasonable distinctions, I mean, it's reasonable for NBA team owners to pick out the people who are 6 ft 5 and up and demonstrate basketball talent, as opposed to people who are 5 feet tall and don't--that's not infringing on equal rights. You could not call that, bias in hiring, if that makes sense.

[truepeacenik]

I'm not quite sure about anything dreadlocks, but don't all of your shed hairs get trapped inside the dread allowing it to thicken and go past your terminal length?

Yes. I make jokes that aren't jokes about my old lady locs.
The defeat of terminal is exactly why I want them.


Chen, what if "everyone can grow long natural hair" really meant "their own best hair?"

equality arises in opportunity. The rest is details. (Important ones to be sure, but a different level)

[PristineAllure]

This thread is an education. I had no idea that there was such a thing as fake dreadlocks. But then, I'm the one who thought black people's hair didn't naturally dread and had to get corrected on that some pages back.

I don't really have anything to add of interest this time, I think Unicorn and Hairkay should carry on, Unicorn having beautiful dreadlocks herself and i believe Hairkay's brother has them? Only one statement struck me as kind of odd--or at least not very well thought out. PristineAllure, you wrote that 'Everyone is equal and everyone can grow long natural hair'.

Aren't we equal if we can't grow long natural hair?

It's obviously not true that everyone can grow long natural hair, even if you don't think there are racial differences.

What if it was true that people of African descent mostly couldn't grow hair as long as Caucasian people, or people of Asian descent would that make us not equal? That doesn't make sense. I wouldn't think your ability to grow hair would make you equal or less equal at all. Everybody is equal because we are all human beings and those of us on this forum enjoy growing our hair, but I would hope no one thought that, let's say, LadyLongLocks or Gossamer or the the other genetically blessed people over in the floor length hair thread are more equal than the rest of us, even if most of us will never get to floor length.

Equality means, equal under the law and in society (allowing for reasonable distinctions)* not that we are all the same, or genetically can manage the same things.



*When I say, reasonable distinctions, I mean, it's reasonable for NBA team owners to pick out the people who are 6 ft 5 and up and demonstrate basketball talent, as opposed to people who are 5 feet tall and don't--that's not infringing on equal rights. You could not call that, bias in hiring, if that makes sense.


Not here for the arguments or the negative energy, or people reading negative meaning into my posts when I'm trying to uplift every race, culture, hair texture, hair color, hair density, even when it is of no benefit to me. If you can find negativity in my uplifting words of "Everyone is equal and everyone can grow long hair" then I will pray for you. After I said "Everyone is equal and everyone can grow long hair" you turn around and say "are we not equal if we can't grow long hair?" The concept of "Long" is subjective to whoever anyone is and whatever their idea of long is. And never did I say anyone was less than another person if they can't grow long hair for some reason. All I was trying to do was say that everyone is equal. How you can manage to find negativity in that, is beyond me. I actually purposely avoid your posts because I notice you seem to find negativity in a lot of things. I used to lurk on this forum for a while before I actually started posting, and every time I saw you post something, I would scroll right past it because you're just a bucket of negative energy. You must have a pretty negative life. I feel sorry for you. I won't be commenting on this forum anymore. I do not wish to encounter people like you in life. I prefer to be happy, and interact with people who don't look for negativity in every statement. Ironic, I believe you are an African American woman, and I wanted to take the time to show respect to African American women and their hair, because there are a lot of negative connotations in society portrayed about African American women and their hair, but yet, you found a way to find negativity in me saying "Everyone is equal" ..I think you need to study your thinking patterns, and your desire to always latch on to something negative, or find something negative. Because you are a negative person. Goodbye, I will not post on this forum anymore. Your negativity is overwhelming.

[Gaalsong]

I have come across a dreadlock thread before but I haven't seen it in a while now.

I am curious what everyone has to say about dreadlocks, specifically on white people?

If you were in a professional setting and recieving services from someone with dreadlocks would you feel like they were less competent at their job, such as a doctor, nurse, lawyer?


I'm probably asking the wrong people though because I think most of us are kinda biased and sensitive when it comes to hair in our own ways, but this is the only place I can come and just yack about hair.... so opinions on dreads, good and bad?

I have always loved dreadlocks so much! I have never had them myself, but I think they look really cool. If anything, I'd be prejudiced to like a professional with dreadlocks more because of their hair. ;-) I did immediately think of dreadlocks on a dark-skinned person. I don't think I've ever seen a white person with dreadlocks who didn't fit into the musician/artist/hippie kind of group. But I wouldn't mind if I did.

[Hairkay]

I'm not quite sure about anything dreadlocks, but don't all of your shed hairs get trapped inside the dread allowing it to thicken and go past your terminal length?
Yes you end up keeping all of the shed hair in locs.

mindwiped; I suspect the extensions you're refering to are braided extensions. These are pretty common as are loose [hair] extentions. Locs from fake hair aren't very common at all, as Hairkay indicated. None black people are constantly telling me they like my braids/plaits. (I have locs) Many seem unable to differenciate between small braids and locs.

Regarding any cultural appropriation aspect... Life's too short and too many cultures have had locs for me to care or claim ownership for any hair not on my head.

ETA: That's right AJNinami

Unicorn
Some who aren't used to seeing different braided styles with or without extensions can mistake them for locs. Again to me it's very obvious because you can see the braided pattern in the hair. The only time I'd find it a bit confusing is those who started off their locs as braids because you'd still see the pattern for a long time.

Chen,

My sister currently has dreadlocks. My brother had them once years ago.

The fake ones surprised me too. It's even possible to reattach locs that have been cut off. That means there are those who wear real loc extensions (real locs cut off and given to another person to join to their hair). Finding out about that was another shocker. I thought it strange that in some places in India women had had their hair stolen which was sold for cash in their hair market and probably made it's way to be exported along with the other hair to make weaves, etc. Well in South Africa dreadlocks have become so popular that they like real hair loc extensions. People are stealing others's dreadlocks. See here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21498878

Reattaching/attaching locs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZDqM7lnmn0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TKuKsF0ZCM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIvT5XoegZM

Here's some more fake ones, crochet extension style

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiqi7amVPF8

[truepeacenik]

i have reported the personal attack.

[chen bao jun]

I am a teacher by profession.

I am used to having discussions in which people have different opinions and are allowed to express them, and then give the reasoning behind them, and in which people respectfully disagree with each other. I am also used to having people point it out to me when I haven't thought something through to all of its possible implications, or have phrased it in an unclear way and also to pointing out to others, respectfully I hope (anyway that is my intention) when they do the same. I find that this clarifies my thinking on issues,and helps me to express myself more clearly next time. Especially on important subjects, where I wouldn't like to be miscontrued; subjects such as the meaning of the word 'equality'.

I am indeed sorry that this is seen as negative, and I repeat that this was not the intention, nor is it my intention to offend anybody. We are on this hair forum to relax, support each other and have fun. Sometimes we have discussions that go beyond just being light entertainment,and I personally enjoy them and feel I learn from you guys but clearly having their statements questioned make some feel stressed and feel attacked which is indeed a shame.

I still feel that my question (about whether one would actually wish to be seen as equal based on some physical characteristic which varies from person to person if not from race to race, such as the ability to grow long hair) is a valid question, but accept that this is possibly not the place to have a discussion about it.

It certainly is OT.

I am not saying this to PristineAllure, who has made it crystal clear that she doesn't want to read further posts by me, but to the rest of you. Peace.

[mary*rose]

That is so weird that this thread is at the top of the forum because I literally had a dream last night where I had beautiful long dreads and I was telling everyone all about twist and tear and stuff when really, I don't know anything about dreadlocks. I just happen to think they look pretty cool.

And chen, I don't think you're negative - I just think you read something different in PristineAllure's post :) It's good to be able to disagree and still respect other people's opinions. It's also highly difficult to do that on the internet haha. We forget how heavily we rely on nonverbal language when having conversations!

[Sarahlabyrinth]

Actually I took it as meaning that we are all equal and we can all grow healthy long hair (with varying levels of "long" and obviously not including those who have alopecia or health issues affecting hair) but without the connotation of "we are not equal if we can't grow healthy long hair".

I guess we all see things differently. Sorry you were attacked, Chen. I know you weren't trying to be negative or upset anyone. And that is the trouble with the internet, we take things in ways in which they weren't intended.

[humble_knight]

How you can manage to find negativity in that, is beyond me. I actually purposely avoid your posts because I notice you seem to find negativity in a lot of things. I used to lurk on this forum for a while before I actually started posting, and every time I saw you post something, I would scroll right past it because you're just a bucket of negative energy. You must have a pretty negative life. I feel sorry for you. I won't be commenting on this forum anymore. I do not wish to encounter people like you in life. I prefer to be happy, and interact with people who don't look for negativity in every statement. Ironic, I believe you are an African American woman, and I wanted to take the time to show respect to African American women and their hair, because there are a lot of negative connotations in society portrayed about African American women and their hair, but yet, you found a way to find negativity in me saying "Everyone is equal" ..I think you need to study your thinking patterns, and your desire to always latch on to something negative, or find something negative. Because you are a negative person. Goodbye, I will not post on this forum anymore. Your negativity is overwhelming.


I just think you read something different in PristineAllure's post It's good to be able to disagree and still respect other people's opinions<--------yes, it is good to agree, or disagree, but most of all respect that everyone is entitled to express their opinion. There's no need to start personal attacks simply because we do not like the way someone expresses their opinion.

[Unicorn]

Wow!

Chen please don't allow that attack to stop you posting. One swallow doesn't make a summer and that has to be the very first time i've seen a claim that your posts are negative, but I've seen many in praise of your posts.

Besides, (selfishly) I'd miss your posts if they didn't appear. I don't often respond, but it doesn't meant I don't enjoy them and/or learn from them. I can't be the only one.

Unicorn

[mindwiped]

mindwiped; I suspect the extensions you're refering to are braided extensions. These are pretty common as are loose [hair] extentions. Locs from fake hair aren't very common at all, as Hairkay indicated. None black people are constantly telling me they like my braids/plaits. (I have locs) Many seem unable to differenciate between small braids and locs.

Regarding any cultural appropriation aspect... Life's too short and too many cultures have had locs for me to care or claim ownership for any hair not on my head.

ETA: That's right AJNinami

Unicorn

Actually, these were locs, they were fake, so much so that they looked like sewn in felted cloth fibers. It didn't even contain much hair, natural or manufactured. There was no organized over/under weaving of hair. The ones I'm in specifically thinking of were very large in diameter, and there was no confusion about them possibly being braids.

The small braids I think you're referring to are the ones that I've seen used in styles that I could tell with a glance that it was artificial hair.

Most of my co-workers, as well as the women who's hair made me jealous have very nice quality hair items, and stylists who's technique makes it hard to tell if of this is a style made from the person's own, still attached to the scalp, hair. That is why it was such a revelation to figure out that it wasn't, and that's how they were avoiding the damage that even amazingly well cared for hair has.

But thank you, your thoughts as well as the vocabulary that I'm trying to pick up helps me say what I'm meaning, in a manner that I hope conveys my context as well as the content.

[ravenheather]

Wow!

Chen please don't allow that attack to stop you posting. One swallow doesn't make a summer and that has to be the very first time i've seen a claim that your posts are negative, but I've seen many in praise of your posts.

Besides, (selfishly) I'd miss your posts if they didn't appear. I don't often respond, but it doesn't meant I don't enjoy them and/or learn from them. I can't be the only one.

Unicorn

You aren't the only one. I enjoy Chen's posts all the time.

[chen bao jun]

Thank you very much, Unicorn and RavenHeather for your kind words. It's very much appreciated.

[mindwiped]

You aren't the only one. I enjoy Chen's posts all the time.

I enjoy your posts both here and elsewhere, ardd a fyi.

[Duchess Fuzzy Buns]

Wow!

Chen please don't allow that attack to stop you posting. One swallow doesn't make a summer and that has to be the very first time i've seen a claim that your posts are negative, but I've seen many in praise of your posts.

Besides, (selfishly) I'd miss your posts if they didn't appear. I don't often respond, but it doesn't meant I don't enjoy them and/or learn from them. I can't be the only one.

Unicorn

I agree. I have always enjoyed your posts Chen, even as a pre-member lurker. I don't know where this notion that you're a "bucket of negative energy" comes from. I just don't see it.

[Cheyne]

Thank you for your posts, Chen. They are concise, well written and informative.

As to the question of dreadlocks? It's only hair, people. I tend to judge people by their actions not their clothing or hairstyle.