In the past half-decade, many White Americans – especially those in celebrity spotlights (e.g. Zack Effron) – who have styled their hair into "dreadlocks" (ropelike strands formed by matting or braiding hair) have been accused of culturally appropriating African American culture. Non-black people who have publicly worn dreadlocks have been charged with “appropriating” and “stealing from” black culture, while still others jeer non-black dread wearers for “playing at being black,” without having to adopt the alleged adversity or social stigma facing the black community.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term “cultural appropriation” as, “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the practices, customs, or aesthetics of one social or ethnic group by members of another (typically dominant) community or society.” In layman's terms, cultural appropriation is, most archetypally, the theft of a feature of a (usually subordinately perceived) culture, perpetrated by a (usually dominantly perceived) culture. The appropriating culture ostensibly lacks a familiarity – an obligatory intimacy – with other cultures on a level high enough to use their symbols; thus, use/adoption of a cultural symbol by a non-associated group is often perceived as disrespectful to or mocking of the appropriated culture.

It is self-evident that this idea exists as long as it is acceptable for certain groups of people to claim exclusivity over the ideas, customs, arts, languages, and practices of their ancestors (who developed and advanced the culture) and of their cultural contemporaries (who maintain the culture in the modern day and carry it into the future).

Still, all forms of cultural exclusivity or ownership can be claimed only so long as cultures remain single, distinct, and pure organs. In other words, the “rights” to certain cultural symbols become less exclusive to groups and more ubiquitous to humanity the more our cultures, races, and ethnicities overlap.

As history ceaselessly marches towards a point of absolute interconnectedness, cultures, races, and ethnicities will continue to converge into each other. Take, for example, adding drops of food coloring to a glass of water. As time increases, each drop – although originally distinct shades – will disseminate across the surface until they each spread out to touch the rim of the glass in all directions. The new, homogenous pigment will be fundamentally composed (and dependent) on each constituent shade, yet will neither be blue nor red nor yellow. Likewise, modern mechanisms of globalization are accelerating the convergence of axes of definition that once existed as parallel planes. For instance, cellular communication, internet and social media access, and high speed (and cheaper than ever) air and motor travel (to name a few) are blending once-separated lines of identity into complex, pluralist intersectionalities. The resulting identities are not merely a tally of constituent cultures and races – are not the simple arithmetic of adding up the sum of the ingoing colored drops, but are the lenses created through the unique way in which each of these strata intersect. There are quite literally infinite potential shades of color, infinite combinations of axes – of oppression, of advantage, of race, of ethnicity, of culture, of hair color, of natural talent, of disability, of sexuality, etc. – which can be combined to produce individual identities. Thus, it follows that the individual is the ultimate minority. In accordance, when someone is – with no more meaningful investigation than a simple glance at skin color – attacked for appropriating another culture, the accuser ignores their victim’s potential multifarious intersectional identities that could, in a million ways, cross to entitle ownership to a cultural, ethnic, or racial symbol that may parallel their (the attackers) own claim (also, might I add, making assumptions about someone expressly based on the color of their skin is a form of ignorance known as racism).

The essential truth that human identity has potentially infinite axes and intersections instructs that the only way to maintain cultural exclusivity claims will be to designate some as-of-yet-unimagined omnipotent construct as the final social arbiter, piecing out who belongs to which cultures, races, and ethnicities, and delineating where intersections that may entitle ownership to certain symbols may arise. It is here that the thesis of cultural exclusivity unravels, because culture is not merely a birthright; that is to say, one does not belong to “x” culture simply because they possess “y” blood and “z” skin color. As Yi Wang of Harbin Engineering University summarizes rather succinctly, “People are not mere objects of cultural influences, but subjects who can reject or integrate culture.” The fact that cultural identity is a malleable, adoptable, and combinable spectrum, based most fundamentally on matters of free choice (i.e. where to live, which cultural aspects you integrate or reject, etc.), makes the task of excluding individuals from cultural symbols on the grounds of perception all the more unthinkable.

Moreover, certain characteristic aspects of cultures have developed independently in multiple cultures around the world, making the game of picking apart what belongs to which culture and which culture belongs to whom all the more convoluted. For example, as CNN reporter Emanuella Grinberg writes, “Historians and anthropologists have found evidence of the ‘do [dreadlocks] in ancient Egypt, Germanic tribes, Vikings, Pacific Islanders, early Christians, the Aborigines and the New Guineans as well as the Somali, the Galla, the Maasai, the Ashanti and the Fulani tribes of Africa.” What’s more, each of the aforementioned sects have fathered handfuls of distinct cultures, each of which has proliferated into their own new subcultures, and the pattern continues. Ginberg echoes this sentiment again by relating a piece of dialogue from speaker and writer Feminista Jones: “Given dreadlocks’ rich history, it’s hard for one group to claim them.”

She follows up on this, saying, “Sure, white people can wear locs. For some, they have religious or spiritual meaning. For others, it’s just a hairstyle. My research informed me that Indian monks wore them long before they reached the Western Hemisphere, so I’m not sure anyone has any particular claim.”

Sources:

https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/45742?redirectedFrom=cultural+appropriation#eid1223654010

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/31/living/white-dreadlocks-cultural-appropriation-feat/index.html

https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/09-Yi-Wang.pdf

Moral judgment cannot stand out of contexts. While the choice of hairstyle should constitute nothing but a matter of personal choice, our societal context today says otherwise. Thus, it is culturally and morally offensive for white people to wear dreadlocks in the contemporary context.

Colonial legacies serve as the context for the freedom of hairstyles. Historically many groups have adopted dreadlocks. However, to use this line of reasoning to detach dreadlocks from black culture ignores the most prominent historical context around this topic. During the age of slavery, hairstyles represented an important expression of freedom and pride for black slaves, when they had little bodily autonomy. Consequently, slave owners shaved slaves’ heads as a means of humiliation. After the abolishment of slavery, African Americans had to alter their hair to mimic the typical styles of white people to better assimilate into a white-dominated society. Hairstyles such as dreadlocks did not become prominent until the age of the Civil Rights Movement. [1] Thus, hairstyle and the freedom around it have deep roots in black culture and the fight for racial justice. It goes without saying that in our society today, such a context bears much more weight than that of the Egyptians or the Vikings (two groups that also used to adopt dreadlocks). [2] Thus, a historical justification for whitewashing dreadlocks represents only a cherry-picking exercise of history.

Even today, hairstyles such as dreadlocks bear an association with race, and more importantly racism. Many black people have suffered workplace discrimination due to dreadlocks. Many workplaces have banned dreadlocks as an “unprofessional hairstyle”. Job recruiters also tend to prefer candidates with a more “clean-cut” physical appearance. [3] This practice disproportionately disadvantages African Americans and forces them to change their natural hair. In a related court case, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) considers this practice racist. The concept of race, they argue, includes characteristics associated with it, such as dreadlocks (the conservative U.S. Court of Appeal in the 11th Circuit eventually sided against the EEOC.). [1] If dreadlocks bear no particular association with African Americans, why is it used as a tool to discriminate against them? What happened to the freedom of hairstyle for those discriminated against in the workplace? Thus, it seems bizarre for white people to advocate for their dreadlocks as a personal choice when African Americans face workplace discrimination over theirs.

Contexts and power dynamics matter. Cultural appropriation does not occur when one group uses something from another one. It occurs when the group with power can express the culture of a disadvantaged group more freely than the disadvantaged group itself. Hairstyles such as dreadlocks are not color-blind. They represent, symbolically, and sometimes literally, the struggle of African Americans in today’s society. So long as racism and colonial legacy matter, hairstyles will continue to bear that representation.

These arguments do not call for banning white people from wearing dreadlocks, which would constitute an infringement on personal freedom. Rather, they lay out the moral insensitivity, willful or not, of such a practice.

For these reasons, it is culturally and morally offensive for white people to wear dreadlocks in the contemporary context.

[1]. Wilkinson, A.B. 2016. "No Dreadlocks Allowed". The Atlantic, , 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/no-dreadlocks-allowed/506270/.

[2]. Grinberg, Emanuella. 2016. "Dreadlocks On White Folks: Things To Consider". CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/31/living/white-dreadlocks-cultural-appropriation-feat/index.html.

[3]. McGregor, Jena. 2019. "More States Are Trying To Protect Black Employees Who Want To Wear Natural Hairstyles At Work". The Washington Post, , 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/19/more-states-are-trying-protect-black-employees-who-want-wear-natural-hairstyles-work/.

tl;dr Black people don't own something as insanely generic as NOT brushing your hair.

The problem is, pretty much everyone saying "disagree" doesn't understand the struggle of having long, difficult to manage hair.

As a white person with the longest, nappiest hair you've ever seen in your life, dreadlocks are a practical hair style, and anyone who has the type of hair that is conducive to dreadlocks doesn't actually have a ton of other options.

If I don't brush my hair incessantly, multiple times a day, it naturally forms dreadlocks. I brush it to prevent this from happening. But to DEMAND I brush or be called racist is like demanding a woman wear a bra. You're just.... terrible if you do this. How could one be so callous?

It is morally acceptable for anyone to wear dreadlocks. The problem at hand is power dynamics.

Anyone can wear them, but they look terrible on white people and they are so dirty I would not like to be near someone with dreads...