MADE IN SOUTH AFRICA –THE STATE OF BLACK HAIR
MADE IN SOUTH AFRICA –THE STATE OF BLACK HAIR
I remember talking to one of my mentors about her early experiences of apartheid. She shared with me that when her family had the rare moment of visiting one of the many beautiful beaches in Cape Town, it was always a day of excitement for her and her siblings. Their parents would ensure that they didn’t just stay on the water’s edge. They would take them into the water to confront their fears. During one of their visits, as they were playing on the beach, she could see her father at a distance talking to a couple of white men in suits. She recalls that it was quite a heated exchange. Eventually her father came back and told them that they had to pack up and leave the beach. As children who had anticipated the beach visit they would say no ‘we just got here.’ Their resistance led to a smack from their father who disciplined them for questioning his orders. This made her resent him.
That was the nature of apartheid. It enforced itself through its victims and those closest to them including their parents. The white apartheid police officers cast my mentor’s father into the role of the bad guy by making him forcibly remove his own family from the beach leading to misplaced anger within their family.
The thing about black hair is that it is often us black people who make derogatory statements about black hair. A couple of years ago I was having lunch with my black colleagues at our very white corporate work place. I cannot remember the context of our lively lunch discussion but it led to a comment by a black man telling me that people with dreadlocks are dirty. I have dreadlocks and my black community including those closest to me are the ones preoccupied with the state of my hair. This preoccupation is out of concern for me.
They are worried that I may not be taken seriously if my hair is not presentable. Ever since I was a child I have always hated getting my hair done because it takes so much time and I would rather be doing other things. My black hairdresser would scold me for swimming with my straight relaxed hair but I never understood the fuss around hair. As black people we associate children with pulled back, tamed straight hair as the well looked after children. If your hair is neat it is assumed your community cares about you. Unkempt hair is a signifier of a neglected child. We believe that we will be respected by society if we constrain our unwieldy hair and that of our children.
It is not always explicit messages by Clicks and Tresemme that perpetuates texturism. It is the covert ways in which those of us with ‘kaffir’ hair are coerced by the world to assimilate, to straighten and loosen up our tightly coiled hair. It is the school and work hair policies that prescribe that hair must be ‘neat’ that coerce us into choosing weaves and relaxers over own natural texture.
These covert messages of the undesirability of our hair finds amplification by using us, its victims. It is our own policing of each other’s hair that does more damage than Clicks and Tresemme. Apartheid, as a system of government has collapsed but its ideology still lives on through us. Beyond Clicks, the real revolution is within us. Our minds are imprisoned by illogical racist ideology. The rapper Killer Mike said it best ‘we are free, so let’s act like it.’ To Clicks and all those companies and institutions that dabble in anti-blackness – all I have to say is –‘we are a free people, so please act like you know.”
