Should The CROWN Act include white people with locks?
My mixed opinions regarding white people with "natural black" hairstyles
I was getting ready to pay the balance on my dog’s vet visit and comparing rates for a heartworm prescription medicine. While casually talking to a sista with a natural updo behind the counter, a white woman walked up to us. She immediately interrupted the sista and started explaining why I need to join their rebate program.
The whole time she was talking, I was trying to stop focusing on these tangled twists and turns that I’m pretty certain were supposed to be locks (controversially also known as “dreadlocks”). As she rambled on about this rebate program, I thought about how much hell black women went through to be able to wear their natural hair at work, and it took the CROWN Act* to finally make them not have to wear a relaxer, a weave or straight-iron their hair to death to be considered “presentable” in Corporate America. But here’s this blonde, straight-haired white lady who is just enjoying the look without the fight. To use a sports reference, it’s like looking at a new player on a championship-winning team flashing his ring around.
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According to hair historian Lori L. Tharps, “The modern understanding of dreadlocks is that the British, who were fighting Kenyan warriors (during colonialism in the late 19th century), came across the warriors’ locs and found them ‘dreadful,’ thus coining the term ‘dreadlocks.’”
But it’s not really my business how she wears her hair, and the goal of this visit was about my dog. So I focused on her face, ignored her hair and listened to her talk. When she was done, I patiently told her I did not want to do the rebate program she was discussing. She opened her mouth to speak again, and the sista with the natural updo stood up from her seat, walked around the desk and handed me a sheet of paper to sign.
Recommended Read: “I wrap my hair, deal with it! ~ The odd responses to black women who wear head wraps and scarves”
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I’m fully aware that that sista could’ve handed me that same paper without standing—because she’d been sitting for the approximate 20-30 minutes I’d been there. Still, it was a welcome distraction. I didn’t understand why this white lady with the locks felt like the sista could not do her job on her own and she just had to come way from a back room to talk over her. More importantly though, it felt symbolic of the hairstyle: It was encroaching on something that was not her business.
