Black Anthology essential(s) 2021 Playbill

Dramaturgical Note What does Blackness look like?

For many of us, Blackness is identity. It is a place of comfort, the source of a shared experience that is ancient and meaningful. It is hair, skin, family, tradition, community, love.

But if Blackness is hair, which kinds of hair? Natural hair has long been rejected by popular culture and seen as something to be “fixed” in order to achieve success. In the 1900s, products to straighten hair (alongside skin-lightening products) created by and for Black people were already taking off. The first hair products to ever have been conceptualized by, created by, and consumed by African Americans were hair softeners and hair-straightening combs. Influential moments like the “Black is beautiful” movement in the 60s, as well as figureheads like Angela Davis and Diana Ross placed new emphasis on the natural state of Black hair, championing afros and Black self-love.

Publications like the Negro Digest began to encourage a new movement “toward a black aesthetic” as a sign of non-conformance to Eurocentric beauty standards. But even then, natural hair was radical—militant, even. This not only shaped the way Black people saw their hair but also the way white people saw Black hair, as an association between natural textured hair and unruliness was formed.

Today, Black hair continues to be hyper-political. The CROWN Act, which was first introduced in 2019 and has since been accepted by seven states, proposes legislation to prohibit race-based hair discrimination, an indication of the continued political reality of our hair.

Black hair is persecuted in the workplace, in the classroom, and at home. In fact, the CROWN Act was rooted in a 2019 study by Dove that found that Black women report being 30 percent more likely to receive formal grooming instruction at their workplace, and 1.5 times more likely to be sent home or know of a Black woman who was sent home from work for her hair. It can be a source of derision from any number of sources—those who choose to chemically straighten their hair are criticized by those who those who are natural; Black men are warned to wear their hair in such a way as to not look like a “thug”; 4C hair textures are discarded as “bad hair,” and treated like a curse passed from parent to child. The 2000s saw a resurgence in the natural hair movement with documentaries like My Nappy Roots: A Journey Through Black Hair-itage in 2005 and Good Hair in 2009, and the new prevalence of Black-owned hair blogs and products 11