I Love My Hair: The Weaponizing of Black Girls Hair by Educators in Early Childhood Education

Wood, J. Luke

doi:10.1007/s10643-020-01081-1

Cited by 20 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Braids and dreads are strongly discouraged in most Jamaican schools because they are associated with notions of uncleanliness (Elassar, 2020). The study of Essien and Wood (2021) documents how, in U.S. schools, Black girls' natural hair is still weaponized, as it is “viewed as a marker of second‐class citizenship and as an indicator of defilement” (p. 401). Kinky hair elicits discomfort and critique from White hegemonic audiences 7 .…”

Section: Contemporary Challenges Contemporary Hair Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics

Greensword

2022

Sociology Compass

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In this article, I chronicle the ways in which Black women's hair has been used not only to exert political oppression and dominance, but also to resist alienation in the Americas.Whether covered during field labor, groomed on Saturday evenings, celebrated on Sunday, arranged as prestigious imitation in the "Big House," braided into secret codes in Colombia, shaved as punishment, or denied all exhibition under the tignon laws in Louisiana, hair has been weaponized to control, hypersexualize, and de-feminize Black women for centuries. More recently, there has been a resurgence of natural hairstyles, which has been abundantly documented in sociology and anthropology. However, this trend has been countered by restrictive policies that insist on standardizing Whiteness as the norm of hair structures. Drawing on studies of race and hair across multiple periods of Pan-American history, this article argues that in more ways than one, Black hair is, and has always been, political.

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Section: Contemporary Challenges Contemporary Hair Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics

Greensword

2022

Sociology Compass

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“…The Black beauty salon is a complex site, given that it can offer Black women and girls respite from structural gendered racial violence while often enabling them to adapt their hair to Eurocentric norms—norms they are frequently sanctioned for violating. Black girls continue to be penalized, by suspension or expulsion, for wearing their hair in its natural state (Essien and Wood 2020). Black girls as young as preschool and elementary school age are often stigmatized for their hairstyles and are labeled as defiant and viewed as a distraction.…”

Section: Interview Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Girls and the Beauty Salon: Fostering a Safe Space for Collective Self-Care

Battle

2021

Gender & Society

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Black girls regularly experience gendered, racial structural violence, not just from formal systems of law enforcement, but throughout their daily lives. School is one of the most central and potentially damaging sites for Black girls in this regard. In this paper, I draw attention to the role of the beauty salon as a space of renewal for Black women and girls as they navigate systems of oppression in their daily lives and report on the ways in which a specific beauty salon in Chesterfield County, Virginia, supported a group of Black high school girls. The study focuses on the exposure of Black girls to carceral measures in school settings and speaks to the role of African-American beauty salons as spaces where collective care from violence can manifest and strategies to interrupt racialized gendered violence against Black girls can emerge. As Co-Investigator of this study funded by the Department of Justice, I created the “scholar-artist-activist lab,” consisting of a small group of undergraduate and graduate students facilitating workshops with a mixed gender group of Black high-school students, to discuss, interact, and participate in social justice-centered exercises. I focus here on the experiences of the Black girls who participated in the study.

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“…As with the hypersurveillance of Black girls’ comportment and the sanctions imposed on them when authorities label them as “defiant,” Black girls receive additional punishment for being “distracting” (Wun 2016). As early as elementary school, Black girls learn that their hair affects their treatment in school, and they reach an impasse: my crown or your comfort (Essien and Wood 2021). As schools use hair policies to deny Black girls who proudly don natural hairstyles or box braids access to sports or entry to prom, or require their presence at in-school suspension, they engender the forced and farcical choice between culture and academic success (Williams 2017).…”

Section: Policing Black Girls’ Hairmentioning

confidence: 99%

And Who Will Revere the Black Girl

Hill

2021

Gender & Society

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While the mainstream media continues to narrowly define justice and reduce the site of its presence or absence to murder scenes and court cases, justice is often foreclosed long before someone is murdered and we must #SayHerName. To expand the project of Black mattering beyond race and physical death, this essay animates how body policing through school dress code policy sanctions racial-sexual violence and provide girls with an ultimatum: either abandon body sovereignty and self-expression, or accept the consequences of being read as a distraction, a problem. (Re)membering classic Black feminist theory and the 2013 case of Vanessa Van Dyke, this essay locates these underrecognized facets of state violence as an extension of the #SayHerName project. Through a Black girlhood studies framework, the author underscores embodiment as an essential measure of justice and reframes mattering through the importance of Black girls’ crowns.

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I Love My Hair: The Weaponizing of Black Girls Hair by Educators in Early Childhood Education

Cited by 20 publications

References 24 publications

Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics

Historicizing black hair politics: A framework for contextualizing race politics

Black Girls and the Beauty Salon: Fostering a Safe Space for Collective Self-Care

And Who Will Revere the Black Girl

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