Is there a Jurisprudence of Black Hair?

What do cornrows, twists, locs, afros, perms, American Airlines, Sacha Obama, $9 billion, and jurisprudence have in common? A common theory of black hair.  For some, this topic is superfluous, trivial, and a spoil of the multicultural/politically correct era of higher education.  Classes on "Black Hair" offered at Stanford, UNC, and other colleges quickly became the paradigmatic course of ridicule in the multicultural backlash, with fearful pundits imagining syllabi featuring subscriptions to Hype Hair magazine and entire sessions devoted to "Oprah's Hair: Weave or Natural?" Devoting all that time to something as trivial as hair greatly disturbed those who viewed education and politics as more traditional.

But for others, a discussion of black hair incites wide ranging discussions of race.  The hair is just a starting point.  Black hair, and the largely unacknowledged presumptions it creates, is discursive.  Afros mean something different than straightened hair, and naturally curly/kinky hair psarks different emotions than "fine," wavy, or straight hair.  Combined with the gradations of skin color , the nexus of hair texture and complexion creates an aesthetic binary of black and white. 

This topic can also bring discussions of racial intermixture, racial essentialism, employment discrimination, professional capability, class stratification, and self-perception.  Black people have been fired for wearing braids in the workplace, favored for having longer and straighter hair, and arrested on the suspicion of drug possession from wearing dreadlocks.  For most people of African descent, the choice of how to wear one's hair, and the biological delineation of good (straight, "White") and bad (kinky, "African") engages a host of political considerations. 

Chris Rock's new documentary, Good Hair, takes on this longstanding bewilderment of black hair. The trailer itself is a concise explication of the conflict. Rather than treating it as universal, Rock perfectly describes the racial specificity of the hair of black people, demonstrating the multiracial complicity of accepted stereotypes and presumptions that "grow" from something as silly and important as follicles on one's head.

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Don't tell anyone, but I recently listened (I can't see the TV from where I sit and work) to an episode of The View in which Chris Rock was on discussing this and found it quite informative.