bornabitch-allthedaysandnights:
I swear someone could go stranded on a desert island and have their hair naturally dread up and they would STILL consider it cultural appropriation
This post proves the point of why nonblack people shouldn’t ‘dread’ their hair.
Only afrotextured (3c-4c type hair) dreads naturally because of its corkscrew shape.
All other types of hair matt, which is a whole different process where the cuticle of the hair has to be damaged and raised, revealing the inner sticky core of the hair in order for the hair strands to stick to one another. (picture for example here)
Obviously, these 2 things are not the same.
That’s why all it takes for black people to have dreads is a little twisting and some kind of moisturizing product, and a life time commitment to constant maintenance & hygiene. Black people’s dreadlocks are CLEAN.
And why white people do silly shit like back combing, the ‘twist n rip’ method, elmers glue, not washing their hair, and other forms of damage, lack of hygiene and neglect to achieve an imitation of the real thing they consider a ‘low effort’ hairstyle.
Ultimately the non-black people neglecting their hair to imitate dreadlocks are reinforcing the negative stereotypes about black hair that have existed for centuries and led to white people making laws against black people’s natural hair,saying black people’s hair is unprofessional, continue to make rules against natural black hair, fire black people for their for their natural hair, threatened black people with expulsion for their natural hair,assaulted black people for their hair etc
God dammit, I was looking for this post earlier too.
