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black people have been told that they are ugly ever since the first white man raped and pillaged the first african village and brought africans into slavery. since then hair has been a big issue of beauty in the black/african american community. ever head mention of “good hair”? when someone says that someone has “good hair” it means that they have straighter, more caucasian hair. especially back before the civil rights/”black is beautiful” era of the 60s and 70s black women especially were urged, if they didn’t have “good hair”, to straighten their hair to look like white/caucasian hair. (of course, when i say “back in the day” i just mean that it was possibly more pervasive then; it is still very pervasive now and a lot of women go through a lot of work, time, and money to have their hair straightened rather than leave it in its natural state.) so hair has always been a big deal. when folks started wearing afros back in the 60s and 70s that was radical because instead of hating their bodies and trying to adhere to white standards of beauty they were reclaiming their own beauty and saying, no! i come from africa, and this is how i look, and that’s beautiful, and i don’t care what dominant (read: WHITE) america thinks! that was radical and liberating and very important to many people in the black community—it was very important to the evolution/formulation of black social consciousness and identity as well as it was very important for the individual’s sense of self-love.

with regards to dreads specifically, white folks often talk about dreadlocks as if they were dirty, which only perpetuates the white racist stereotype of black people as dirty, unkempt, uncivilized, animal-like, etc. i personally don’t know much about rastafarianism, but besides even that, the wearing of dreadlocks is, for many people of african descent living in the Diaspora, a symbol of resistance and struggle and very much a part of black culture and identity and has very much been rooted in a political statement against such racist stereotypes and against adhering to white standards of beauty.

considering all this, you may begin to see how black people might view white people wearing dreads not only with suspicion but with contempt as it is a fraudulent appropriation of a culture and history of resistance by the very people who have upheld and benefitted from the oppression of black people! when white people wear dreads it’s like a slap in the face to that whole history of oppression and resistance. it dilutes the potency of the message and strips away the power—out of the hands of black people—that such a statement originally made against white supremacy and the status quo. which is, when you think about it, typical; we white people have been making quite a cushy living off of taking everything away from black people and other people of color, so why wouldn’t we, after we’ve taken everything else, take this as well, the very fruits of thier resistance against us taking everything away from them. honestly, it makes me sick.