TL;DR: White people wearing dreadlocks is a form of cultural appropriation

Hair is important. It has come to mean a lot more culturally than just a protein filament that grows out of our heads. We use our hair to express and beautify ourselves, but also to engage with our own culture: certain hairstyles are often associated with specific festivals, religious rituals, and even resistance movements. Hair is also a part of race, and different hair colours, textures, and styles have historically garnered more praise or stigma than others.

Dreadlocks do not belong to a single culture. This hairstyle, which involves the matting of hair into locks, is found throughout history, geography, and culture. In Egypt, archaeologists have found mummies with dreadlocks still attached to their skulls. The first reference to dreadlocks in writing occurs around 1500BC in the Vedic scriptures, holy Hindu texts. The Hindu god Shiva is depicted with dreadlocks, which he used to catch the goddess Ganga (who became the river Ganges) when she fell to Earth. Religious figures in many cultures wear (or wore) their hair in dreadlocks to symbolise a rejection of the material world: such as sadhus in India, priests of Akomfo in Ghana, and Aztec priests in Mexico. In many parts of Africa, dreadlocks hairstyles were instead reserved primarily for warriors, as a symbol of their strength.

Some historians believe that some ancient Europeans wore their hair in dreadlocks, with reference to certain parts of Greece and the Vikings, but to a lesser extent than the rest of the world.

In the 20th Century, dreadlocks attained new meaning with the formation of the Rastafari movement by Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey. This religion evolved as a form of Pan-Africanism, preaching black empowerment and unity and reinterpreting the Bible through a contemporary lens of racial oppression. They wore dreadlocks to symbolise Jesus as ‘the Lion of Judah’ (comparing their dreads to a lion’s mane), and also as a way to honour and emphasise their African heritage. The Rastafarian singer/songwriter Bob Marley blasted Rastafarianism into mainstream culture in the 1970s, and accordingly, dreadlocks became a very fashionable hairstyle. Dreadlocks are now more associated with Rastafarianism than any other culture, and therefore have also become a symbol of black resistance against oppression.

Dreadlocks have become inherently tied to ideas of race and resistance. Many argue that white people should not wear their hair in dreadlocks, because it is a form of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is “when a tradition, such as clothing or a hairstyle, is taken from a culture and used in a different way”. The meaning or significance is discarded, which disrespects the culture in question. Cultural appropriation is usually enacted by a dominant culture over a historically colonised culture, which creates an unequal power relationship: cultural appropriation can be seen as a form of neocolonialism. As historically white cultures have not incorporated dreadlocks (or at least not to the same extent as the majority non-white cultures that feature dreadlocks), white people adopt this hairstyle from cultures outside of their own. Most white people with dreadlocks wear them for aesthetic or anti-establishment rather than religious or cultural reasons, and therefore ignore or de-centre the long and complex race-centred history of dreadlocks. Kyle Ringsuccinctly explains that despite white protestations that ancient white cultures might have had dreadlocks, “the modern-day wearing of dreadlocks by white people is unconnected to their own history and instead inspired by ours”.

What’s more, black people are routinely discriminated against in education and the workplace because of their hair texture and hairstyles. The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie boldly proclaims that “hair is political”. She argues that due to the negative assumptions attached to natural black hair, “If Michelle Obama had dreadlocks or an Afro or cornrows…Barack Obama would not have won”. Meanwhile, white celebrities such as Justin Bieber are beginning to receive some backlash for the ‘cultural insensitivity’ of wearing dreadlocks, but still receive much praise and defence for this fashion statement. This signifies that it is not only culturally ignorant for white people to wear dreadlocks, but also harmful to the progression of an equal society.

If white people shouldn't wear dreadlocks, black people shouldn't dye their hair blonde.

It's an absurd excuse to be racist against white people.

I agree on the ground that no one should wear dreadlocks.
They're dirty and ugly.

White people wearing dreadlocks is cultural appropriation

• Dreadlocks have huge cultural and spiritual history
• People of colour frequently face racist microaggressions and oppression because of their hair and hair styles such as dreadlocks whereas when white people wear them they do not face the same microaggressions and are often praised for them
• Dreadlocks can be much harder to implement, maintain and wear on white people with finer, straight hair and can in fact be very damaging to the hair

As a black person myself, I have no problem with people of other races wearing predominantly black hairstyles unless you're being disrespectful. That's all I really have to say on this.

White people should stop dressing like black people and acting like them, all together. It's embarrassing.

It is possible to participate in another culture as a form of appreciation--recognizing that it is being borrowed--and without attempting to claim it for one's own culture.

this is just cultural appropriation, i thought?

Real overstrech for cultural appropriation.

Nobody wants to play a game where we divide ourselves more by saying what people can wear and what they cant wear because of their skin colour.

For example if I said people who arent white shouldnt be allowed to wear suits because those were invented by a british gentlemen everyone would scream racism, this opinion is just a double standard imo.

I don’t think white people should wear dreadlocks, not because I think it’s cultural appropriation, but because I have yet to see a white person who looks good in them.

Dreadlocks did not originate in black society. They originated in place like Minoan civilization in Ancient Greece and later in ancient Egypt. They were also used in the Nordic regions of the Vikings, so nice tey