A short history of black hair and what it means to our community
A few weeks ago, I was at a party with my two-year-old daughter, Mia. A woman – seemingly with good intentions – came up to my wife and me and described Mia’s beautiful and curly hair as nappy.
I was stunned into silence.
For me, it’s common knowledge that “nappy” is a triggering word, but I was quickly reminded that not everyone is on that same page. It was then that I decided I needed to write an essay on Black hair. Not just because the word “nappy” offends me, but because the issue is one part of a much bigger topic: the power of identity.
There’s a reason the Black community sometimes refers to “nappy” as the “other N-word”. For years it has been at the center of sporadic controversies centering around our hair. While this may seem like a mundane topic to some, hair is actually a crucial marker of identity in our community (and always has been). It is a focus of debate precisely because of how meaningful our hair is to us, as well as the often traumatic history of its treatment.
Hair is also part of a larger discussion around the Eurocentric standards of beauty that have traditionally dominated Western societies. It’s really only in the 21st century that those standards – long, straight hair, slim bodies, light skin tones – have come to be challenged on a large scale. And rightly so: just a few weeks ago, a new study released its findings linking hair straightener products to uterine cancer. Black women use these products more and are potentially at greater risk. The hegemony of Euro-American beauty comes at a potentially fatal price.
Today, thankfully, there is much more media attention given to diverse standards of beauty. Fashion and beauty brands are more willing to talk about racial diversity than they used to be – and many of their product lines have begun cashing in on the multibillion dollar “ethnic” hair care and beauty markets (which Black people essentially fund, at least in America).
But there’s more context to this issue that’s worth digging into – historical and current – so we can appreciate how sensitive a subject Black hair can be. This isn’t just about re-evaluating a word like “nappy” and the harm it causes. It’s about understanding how meaningful our hair is to the Black community, after centuries of having it cut off, jeered at, belittled, and subjected to other people’s control.
The other “N-word”
“Nappy” is believed to originate from an old 17th century English word: “nap,” which was used to describe fraying threads at the edge of fabric. Etymologists and historians have speculated that early American colonists appropriated “nap” to describe the natural coils and kinks in African hair (possibly in connection with the fabric-creating cotton fields that the enslaved worked in and which underpinned the early American economy).
From its very linguistic origins, then, “nappy” has been associated with a white view of Black hair. It has always been a disparaging term, used to distinguish between white standards of hair and beauty and their African equivalents, which white people deemed inferior.
In African societies, hair was an important signifier of social status and identity. Hair signaled who you were in your tribe, your social status, religious beliefs, and kinship networks. When enslavers took Africans from their homelands and sold them into the slave trade, they often cut or completely shaved off their hair. Like their clothing, languages, religions, and other customs, hair was a marker of identity that enslavers sought to (literally) cut out of their enslaved populations. Without these elements of shared culture, it was far easier to keep enslaved Africans divided and incapable of developing any sense of solidarity or even resistance.
It’s difficult to use or hear the word “nappy” without conjuring up this history. While some people in recent years have attempted to reclaim the word, it remains deeply triggering to most people in the community. It is a reminder that our hair – i.e. our bodies and our identities – were once not ours to define for ourselves.
Which is exactly why its inappropriate usage has landed people in difficult situations. In 2007, Don Imus, a famous radio talk show host, was fired by CBS after he referred to the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team as a “bunch of nappy-headed hoes”. A decade earlier, a white NYC school teacher came under fire for assigning a children’s book called “Nappy Hair” to her class. Her intention had reportedly been to cultivate positive feelings about natural Black hair in her students, but parents felt her insensitivity to the word and its connotations was reprehensible.
While I can understand most people don’t intend to be offensive – just like the woman who was trying to compliment Mia – it’s important we all understand that “nappy” is not a neutral descriptor. It is a word steeped in racism and the history of the slave trade. It’s true that some Black people may use it in certain contexts (just as we do with our reclaimed version of the actual “N-word”), but in general, it’s a word we should all leave consigned to history.
Eurocentric standards of beauty – past and present
One of the reasons that “nappy” is difficult to fight for or reclaim is that it’s a very small part of a much larger discussion around the dominance of white, Eurocentric standards of beauty in media, culture, and everyday life.
Last week I wrote about the history of white supremacy and the denigration of Black bodies and minds against the assumed “white standard”. This history is crucial context for understanding why hair continues to be such an important marker of identity in the Black community, as well as a sticking point in debates around cultural and social equality.
The slave trade introduced the Black body to the European or Western consciousness. Over time, many explorers, scientists, physicians, and philosophers theorized about the difference between white and Black bodies. Almost invariably, markers of Black people’s so-called “biological” differences – such as hair, facial features, and skin tone – were constructed as less desirable or inferior to white standards.
This, of course, was not limited to Africans or the Black community as time went on. Similar tyrannies of Eurocentric standards of beauty have taken hold in India, East Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, thanks to European imperialism. As I wrote about recently on the subject of colorism, European colonialists were instrumental in spreading the idea that lighter skin is more beautiful around the world for hundreds of years. This idea was cemented by the white supremacist logic that saw more “whiteness” and therefore more racially desirable qualities in people of mixed race.
The issue of the supremacy of white beauty standards is particularly pertinent in America, where Black people – and Black women especially – have had to adhere to certain cultural codes in order to achieve social access and economic mobility. Just a few years ago, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case in which a Black defendant had been ruled against for claiming wrongful discrimination when she didn’t get a job because she wore dreadlocks to the interview. This may be unsurprising given the conservative majority of the 2018 Supreme Court, but it goes to show how hair is still being used as a battleground for civil rights.
Transforming natural Black hair with chemical straighteners and other processes also comes at a considerable financial cost (not to mention the potentially harmful health consequences mentioned above). This can of course be good for business, and many brands have been eager to capitalize on the multi-billion dollar Black hair care market. But given that Black people account for 90% of spending in the US “ethnic hair care” market, it’s clear that the harmful effects of these beauty standards will disproportionately affect our community.
There are other social and personal costs: one in five Black women still feels pressured to straighten their hair for work – which is twice the number of white women. And studies have shown that all women – including Black women – rate textured hair as less beautiful than straight equivalents. These are biases based on centuries of cultural conditioning, and can lead to many Black women feeling uncomfortable or insecure with their own natural hair.
The future of Black hair
Things have changed a lot in the past few decades. There is a strong “naturalista” movement within the Millennial generation that champions the beauty of natural hair for women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Black women in particular appear to me more empowered than ever before to embrace their natural hair, and increasing Black representation in the media and fashion is a good indication that standards of beauty are beginning to shift.
But the belief that there is such a thing as “good” or “appropriate” hair – a belief rooted in white supremacist standards of beauty and social behavior – still persists to the detriment of our children, institutions, and culture.
In schools around the world, for example, Black girls have reported being excluded, chastised, or removed from classrooms for wearing their hair naturally. Attempts to control or modulate Black hair have to be contextualized – particularly in nations with explicit histories of white supremacy – and resisted as vestiges of defunct systems of racial hierarchy. It simply isn’t acceptable to denigrate natural Black hair as unprofessional or inappropriate in public settings.
In the workplace, preconceptions around what hairstyles count as “presentable” or appropriate must also be viewed critically and contextually. Employees of color should be empowered to express their identities through their natural hair. Placing limitations on Black hair in public settings is tantamount to placing limitations on Blackness – our natural biology is not up for regulation.
The issue has become prevalent enough that the House of Representatives recently introduced a bill called the C.R.O.W.N. Act, which stands for “Creating a Responsible and Open World for Natural Hair”. The proposed legislation would protect individuals from discrimination on the basis of their style or texture of hair. That we, as a nation, have reached the point where we have to legislate federally about hairstyles speaks to how fundamental this issue is to our society. Because the legal scrimmages around hair, and Black hair in particular, are part of a much greater battle for individual freedom from discrimination, based on race, sex, creed, color, origin, sexuality or any other meaningful marker of identity.
Moving towards a society that is accepting of multiple standards of beauty and self-presentation will probably take a long time. But it starts with the understanding that these things are socially and culturally constructed. If we can appreciate the history behind the treatment of Black hair, for example, we can begin to see why Black people’s right to natural hair deserves protection.
I want my little girls to grow up in a world where they have their own language for their hair. I don’t want them to be limited by complex words with painful histories like the “other N-word”. Hair is a huge part of our identity as African-Americans, and I hope they will grow up seeing it as a point of pride and proof of their beauty, rather than something to be suppressed or transformed.
Porter Braswell
