Oh, I dunno, being biracial, I kinda feel like I can wear those too without it being ‘cultural appropriation…’ since, ya know, that’s my culture too.
As a ‘Mixed’ person born in the US, my experience has been that I was encouraged to embrace the more Anglo aspects of my heritage, and to ‘ignore’ the the Afrocentric and Native American aspects, as much as it was possible.
It took me until I was a full grown adult living on a different coast for me to learn to love my hair in its natural state. Now ‘going natural’ is a whole movement in the Black community, and many of my friends and sorority sisters joke about me being one of the ‘first forerunners.’ So yeah… to me, and many people who look like me, it’s kind of a big deal that is ‘that serious.’
My guess is that it hadn’t gotten to the ‘rat’s nest’ stage yet, if she was actually able to comb it out at all.
Naturally straight hair doesn’t have any coil to it, and that’s why the process of ‘locking’ the individual strands is so highly problematic for ‘less melanated’ individuals; without some other binding agent, the segments of hair don’t tend to stay 'locked."
Also, those interested in enlightenment about the (not actual) topic, you’ll note that I avoid calling them “dread-locks”; that’s intentional because the term itself has taken on bigoted, negative connotations for many island folks.
