They are very beautiful and I sometimes find myself almost buying them for a female friend. Then I think about how irritiging it is seeing Dashikis/Dashiki designs or hair Locks worn by non-black people and reconsider lol.
Ikooko Okurin,
Let me start by saying that I know that I am treading on the edge of 'white privilege' here. I would ask you to please look more into traditions of other ethnicities wearing hairstyles very similar, if not structurally the same as, dreadlocks. There are a few! I know that many unaware people have the same attitudes of appropriation towards 'locks as others do towards feather headdresses, so it is a touchy issue.
According to Native-Languages.org they were called "hair rolls" in at least one of the original languages. I've been trying to find out more about these hairstyles, without much luck, but I think I can pin down a few things about them: 1) In the cultures that wore them, they seem to be for men only. 2) At least from the invention of photography to present, there seem to be few people documented wearing them.
Personally, I was inspired by research into the Rasta culture to actively reconnect with my Indigenous roots. So many Rastas seem to have said something along the lines of "You've got to have Roots and Culture. Without them you will be wandering lost in the world."
@Zhaanpaxe
That is not what I'm referring to exactly, I'm speaking of 'Locs'(notice in my message I said "hair locks" and not dreadlocks) which is a hair style unique to Black People. All cultures have had neglected/mated hair, first because there were no combs then later when religious sects wanted to prove they were not about vanity in life.
The Visigoths, Romans, Picts, Celts all had matted hair or what is now termed "locks" but it was not a
style , they did not have combs. That look is not what people attempt to emulate. How do I know? Because there are no pictures for most of them to copy. They, like modern American blacks are all imitating Rastas who are imitating the hair styles they saw when visiting Africa.
Many groups in Africa also had locks: Dogun, Masai, Wolof, Mende, Mandingo , Fulani and many more. Certain groups of Cush now known as Ethiopia and not only wore locks but gave birth to the movement that later would be adopted by Rastas when they visited Africa in the 1930s. Indian sadhus have been matting and locking their hair for thousands of years.
American blacks and many of the diaspora who wear "dreaded" or locked hair are emulating the 'dreads ' or locks from the Rastafarians who were inspired by Africa.
There are several movements in Africa given over to locked hair from the Baye Fall and the mouride movement and the Fulani who are believed to be some of the first to ever lock their hair, African locking hair goes back thousands and thousands of years BUT there is a difference between religious locks, "dread" locks and cultivated locs.
RELIGIOUS LOCKS are hair that is worn a certain way to signify allegiance to a sect of group. Many cultures had this. Manchurians wore their hair a certain way in China and Chinese Mandarin wore their hair a different way (shaved) one could not copy the other under pain of death.
DREADS the name is a pejorative. It was used by whites to describe what they considered the horrible and ugly nature of natural black hair--unkempt EXCEPT that is not how the hair was in Africa. In Africa, hair was almost always meticulously groomed because the hair had other cultural meanings. It told if someone was married or divorced ow widowed or newly entering puberty, or circumcised, it told of death and was meticulously plaited or sealed with decorative beads and shells and mud. EVERYTHING meant something.
But this same hair, which often was taken down, washed and redone in Africa suffered on the Middle Passage slave ships. When slaves arrived to be sold in the Islands or America, their beautiful coiffed heads were clotted with blood, urine, feces, vomit, sperm and everything else that was a testament to the shame and degradation of enslavement.
Upon looking at the hair, the whites declared it DREADFUL and often all men, women and children were shaved bald. Later, women had to wear kerchiefs so whites would not be offended with what to them was so alien and so like their own pubic hair that it only underlined the sexual beast nature of blacks. So dread locks is actually like saying NIGGER. I don't call them dreadlocks. No whites anywhere, under any circumstances save an asylum was trying willingly wearing dreads after around 1500 AD.
Once we begin to actually try to control locks, those are locs that are allowed to grow naturally then at some point are
separated into sections. Black Americans are responsible for the highly groomed and styled form of hair most often seen among young blacks. These locs (notice the different spelling) are often referred to as Locs and NOT dreads or dread locks. It holds to many blacks that whites and Rastas may have dread locks and the hair may be dreaded, but black Americans invented the intricate patterns and uniform look of the modern locks worn in the States and many parts of the UK. It is this form of "dread lock" that is unique to Black people and it is this form that irritates me a bit seeing on non-blacks. These locks have a parting or sectioning pattern of scallops, diamonds, triangles, brick lay, or free form but when retightening, the hair is returned into concise patterns. By making the partings uniform, the hair on Black or coiled hair is often uniform, cylindrical and very, very neat. Why would this irritate me? Because it's a unique creation of Black people, that I think belongs to us. When others try to imitate it, it falls very short because it's simply not for their hair and often the people wearing it don't know the history behind it. What's more, quite a few of the people wearing "dreads" whether they are specifically "Locs" or not, who aren't Black(particularly Whites), are in addition wearing some article of African attire or obviously African-American style clothing(which in general would be fine to wear of course) along with it so it's very clear that they are indeed trying to imitate the culture.
So, no it's not simply I think Black people own the idea of "dreads" and get irritated at any and all wearing them who aren't Black. There's a lot more to it than that. I'm well aware of dreads existing in many cultures however this....
Is unique to my people lol. I'll be getting locs myself soon. Sorry for the babbling =P.
