In many cultures, ethnic groups, and nations around the world, hair is considered a source of power and prestige. African people brought these traditions and beliefs to the Americas and passed them down through the generations.
In my mother’s family (Black Americans from rural South Carolina) the women don’t cut their hair off unless absolutely necessary (i.e damage or routine trimming). Long hair is considered a symbol of beauty and power; my mother often told me that our hair holds our strength and power. Though my mother’s family has been American born for several generations, it is fascinating to see the beliefs and traditions of our African ancestors passed down. We are emotionally and spiritually attached to our hair, cutting it only with the knowledge that we are starting completely clean and removing stagnant energy.
Couple this with the forced removal and covering of our hair from the times of slavery and onward, and you can see why so many Black women and men alike take such pride and care in their natural hair and love to adorn our heads with wigs, weaves, braids, twists, accessories, and sharp designs.
Hair is not just hair in African diaspora cultures, and this is why the appropriation and stigma surrounding our hair is so harmful.
Every time I see that post that’s something like “weird, but technically not a sin,” I think about being seven or eight years old and bawling to the priest that I had scaled the walls of the pantry in my home like a spider monkey in order to eat all of the cookies that my parents had naïvely hidden on the top shelf to keep me from getting into them and wailing that I was a hopeless criminal and hearing just dead silence on the other side of the little wall.
