Please take down your dreadlocks, the cultural appropriation you and people like you perpetuate is the reason why my brothers and sisters are denied employment and discriminated against because their locs are stereotyped as "dirty" and "unkempt".
Asked by Anonymous
I wash my hair regularly yet I also face the exact discrimination when it comes to hair. People judge dreadlocks no matter what colour you are
You do not experience the same discrimination as a black person with locs would experience. Another reason why cultural appropriation is so harmful is that the consequences for a white person rat nesting their hair are not the same as a black person who has locs. Rat nesting your hair and calling it dreadlocks or locs is an act of racism because you are stealing a part of a culture that does not belong to you, that holds great significance to those who traditionally participates in these cultures. Not only are you stealing this practice but you are also changing its meaning, thereby devaluing the cultural significance behind the practice, and disrespecting those who do practice it. Please research white privilege, cultural appropriation, racial profiling, and please google articles of black men, women, and children, who are denied school access, jobs, etc due to their cultural practice of wearing locs.
Black people straighten their hair all of the time. Is that cultural appropriation? Black people douse their hair in all types of harmful and damaging chemicals to achieve straight hair that looks similar to other ethnicities but if don’t here any social justice blogger screaming at them to stop stealing from “white culture”. By you claiming that certain hairstyles belong to certain cultures you have become part of the problem.
White people do not have sacred practices with their hairstyles. Attempting to have sleek, fine, white people hair does not dehumanize white people, nor does it decrease the cultural significance behind the white hairstyles, because there are none. Also, forced assimilation comes into play here. White people have forced people of color into assimilation through acts of genocide, rape, violence, assimilation schools, and discrimination. Research articles about black men, women, and children who were denied school and job access due to their hair being too “kinky” or having dreadlocks. That is only one way forced assimilation has been implemented. Look at western beauty standards and the media and how homogenized “beauty” is.