The Roots
The demonization of Black natural hair dates back to the Transatlantic slave trade and the first poachers to reach Africa’s shores. In many African societies, hair was utilized for all sorts of deeper meanings and depictions such as age, wealth, rank, marital status, tribe, and even health (Greensword 2022, 2). Europeans quickly noticed this cultural significance and made it the first order of business to shave each African of all their hair. This is the first time we noticed a direct politicization to hair, and its social implications were detrimental. Intentionally removing their hair stripped them of any cultural or family ties they still had with Africa.
Early European anthropology was infiltrated with claims that Black hair was repulsive, hideous, and unattractive. Early anthropology studies contained literature that was planting these bias ideologies into European minds, and eventually made its way over to the New World (Bankhead & Johnson 2013, 89). There was a general misunderstanding among Europeans between all the different hairstyles they noticed in each African community. Instead of empathizing, Europeans were quick to condemn and look down upon their culture based on widespread commonalities in Anthropology they had heard. White settlers took these beliefs to America, and looked for every opportunity to oppress African Americans and maintain the inferiority dynamic. Hair was just another tool utilized in the great scheme to maintain white superiority.
Black women have been politically disenfranchised from expressing themselves freely over time. The earliest slaves were forced to use straw hats and bandanas to cover their bare scalps from infections and disease (Byrd & Tharps 2014, 9). These head-covers eventually became a visual stereotype for Black woman, especially when Tignon laws in 1796 forced all black woman, free or enslaved, to cover their hair with these bandanas. Essentially, Black women were forced to wear a visual marker that denotes them as lesser value in society. Whether you were freed or not, the color of your skin and the texture of your hair were the only things taken into account by the American government.