The Racial Meaning

The racial context is not incidental. White people have long treated Black hair as available for inspection, judgment, regulation, commentary, and touch.

Black hair is often placed in a racial double bind. In one setting, natural Black hair is condemned as unprofessional, distracting, unclean, or inappropriate. Black people may be pressured to straighten, cut, cover, or otherwise alter their hair to satisfy white standards.

In another setting, the same hair is exoticized as unusual, fascinating, or available for examination. White people may ask whether it is real, how it feels, how it was styled, or whether they may touch it.

Stigmatization and exoticization may appear different, but both place Black hair under white evaluation. In each case, white preferences are treated as more important than Black autonomy.

The unwanted touching of Black hair must also be understood within the larger history of white control over Black bodies. From slavery through Jim Crow and into modern schools and workplaces, white institutions have claimed authority to inspect, regulate, discipline, and control Black bodies.

Modern hair touching is not the equivalent of slavery. But it carries an old presumption of access into the present: that Black bodily boundaries may be crossed to satisfy white curiosity, comfort, control, or convenience.

The phrase “I was only curious” reveals the problem. Curiosity may explain why the person wanted to touch. It does not explain why that desire was treated as more important than the Black person’s right not to be touched.