(I know you’re done with me and all . . . please don’t be angry with me.)
This sounds logical, but it could also be a myth. I’m not sure how it fits with 40+ years of the word used proudly in reggae music. One of my religion professors in college was from Haiti, he taught us it meant “fearing god”, hence “dread.”
I don’t know what this guy’s Rasta credentials are, but I thought his attitude reasonable, even funny.
“This. . . is my hair, see? H-A-I-R. That’s the word you use to represent this, right?”
Some rastafarians do use the word that way, but again; all people who wear their hair locked are not some monolithic entity that all think and act as one, and I believe I already addressed that up above.
*shrugs
If you won’t listen to the input of someone with actual personal knowledge and lived experience on the subject, then I don’t know what to tell you… except that it’s past time to quit derailing the thread.
Conquerors of many ethnicities imposed shit on the subjugated. Cf. Koreans under the Japanese Empire. And marginal white-Europeans like Irish, Sicilians, and Slavs, depicted as apes in ‘cultured’ media, didn’t benefit like the ruling classes.
Mention was made of non-whites being forced at gunpoint to wear Euro-style clothes. The Mesoamerican experience differed – Indios were forced to wear ‘ethnic’ uniform outfits such as patterned huipiles to identify their village. If Euro-folks now wear Mayan garb, which culture are they appropriating?
Today I was walking downtown at lunch and I saw a nice mountain bike leaning against a tree. No one was around and the bike wasn’t locked. I could really use a bike but I didn’t take it because it isn’t mine. It doesn’t matter who it belongs to or how rich or poor they are? It’s not mine so I left it alone.
If these Euro-folk in your example and their ancestors were all forced to wear these ethnic outfits for generations until it became part of their identity then they are not appropriating anything. For everyone else on the planet that doesn’t have generations of ancestors that were forced to wear these outfits. It’s not yours, so leave it alone.
Is that really so hard to understand?
ETA: Some make a distinction between oppressed groups and not-oppressed but I stick with if it’s nothing to do with whatever my culture is then it’s best to leave it alone. For example I’m not going to wear lederhosen any more than I am going to wear a headdress to some festival. Not mine, leave it alone.
I should say that a lot of my posts here were attempting to be academic or removed in tone, I wasn’t trying to enrage anyone; I respect a great many of the voices here on BB.
I think that cultural appropriation is a broad term and not everyone agrees about what it means, leading to some confusion. I think there are things which are clearly offensive (basically anything to do with Native Americans), but there are grey areas within our American “melting pot” culture (all of American pop music owes a debt to the blues for example.)
I also wonder what our grandchildren will make of this. I hope they will respectfully sort out our national problem with Native American mascots, but will they think white dreads are such a big deal decades from now?
Dreadlocks (or whatever we choose to call them) are a tangled issue (sorry… so much for the academic tone). They occur naturally in anyone with long hair who doesn’t comb/brush regularly (albeit they will be sloppy looking), they are documented in multiple cultures across history, and the cultural association with the African diaspora was popularized by reggae only within the last 40 years. It’s annoying to admit it, but when some asshole fascist wants to wear a kilt and blue face paint and dreads in homage to his Celtic ancestors I can’t honestly argue against it.
My feeling on white dreads has gone back and forth over the years. Now I generally think they’re pretentious and most of the time just don’t look very good, but then every once in a great while I see some pale person who actually looks nice with dreads and have to reassess.
American culture is an unconscious democracy, it just becomes itself naturally. We could gather a hundred African Americans and I doubt they’ll reach a consensus on white dreads.
I agree, but my opinion is the hairstyle is tangential to the problem-- I doubt conditions for black America will change one iota if white people stop wearing dreads; white dreads are the distraction. Let the fops have their hairstyle, be thankful white people aren’t suddenly fascinated with Jheri curls.
Why? I’m actually curious. Being academic and removed in tone is not a neutral choice, after all. Neither is expecting other people to respond in an academic and removed way.
These kinds of experiences aren’t always debates, and a lot of people care but have no desire to debate so what are you trying to achieve by having a debate about it? To convince POC not to react to the realities of how their hair is discussed and treated in society? To discourage to push back on a word because white people have gotten used to it? To not be too passionate about how attitudes about hair impact their day to day life? That we should wait to make decisions about how we think and talk about other people’s hair until the academics have weighed in and given us a historiography? It’s a problematic vantage point to start with.
They likely already have, and also likely don’t pretend to be “objective” on these issues, but instead interrogate their own assumptions and work through them, as well as give a more accurate picture of the history of a topic like hairstyles…
If the word is the issue then would an alternate word really solve the problem?
I think POC should be passionate about anything that directly impacts them negatively (like anyone would), I’m only wondering how much of an affront white dreads are, and whether there is even consensus among POC as to how offensive they are (and should we just dismiss any POC who is OK with white dreads?) I do tend to look at white-dreads with disdain, but I let it go until I know more about the person.
Right, that’s what spun this conversation off in the first place. Unless I missed it, I haven’t seen anything implying that white folks locking their hair is universally abhorrent or anything. No one has said it’s an affront. There’s been a lot of informative discussion about the terminology and history of the hairstyle. Thank you @orenwolf for giving us the forum. I’ve learned a lot. I BBS.
I’ve heard white dread-wearers say that they’ve had African Americans compliment them, which is another thing that made me back up and reassess the idea.
Because there is evidence of other cultures wearing rope-like hair (which could also mean braids) I don’t see how we can say it belongs to one people only.
A co-worker brought in some cookies once and said “these are traditional Italian cookies my grandmother made” and I replied “oh, right, my grandmother made them too, they’re called chrusciki in Poland and Belarus.” He wasn’t having it, “no they’re Italian.” Fact is, nearly everyone in Europe makes the same cookies and claims them as their own, from Portugal to Ukraine.
I sometimes talk about my Eastern European heritage, but I’ve come to realize my “culture” is the one I grew up in, my real brothers and sisters are dumbass Americans. That’s who I am. If my family had left the US when I was a child, and I grew up in Brazil or Bulgaria or Burma, that would be my culture. A friend of mine from high school, his family were Muslims from India who came here before he was born, by every metric he was an American who loved Jimi Hendrix and football (and drinking beer despite what his religion dictated.)
That doesn’t mean I have to be proud of everything the US has done.
BBS.
