Just because you are ignorant of the fact that it is racist to use the term, doesn't mean it isn't. Why did you have to tell her to CHILL OUT? Why were you so quick to discount her feelings about it all? Your intentions weren't bad, but she was offended and you turned it around on her.

Peezy - I am surprised by your comments chastizing someone for being rude. I have seen where you have offended people by your comments, but you disregard their feelings by calling them idiots.

That being said, I do think you have made many helpful posts with some really good information.

Why 'nappy' is offensive

By Zine Magubane | April 12, 2007

WHEN DON IMUS called the Rutgers University basketball team a bunch of "nappy-headed ho ' s" he brought to the fore the degree to which black women's hair has served as a visible marker of our political and social marginalization.

Nappy, a historically derogatory term used to describe hair that is short and tightly coiled, is a preeminent example of how social and cultural ideas are transmitted through bodies. Since African women first arrived on American shores, the bends and twists of our hair have became markers of our subhuman status and convenient rationales for denying us our rightful claims to citizenship.

Establishing the upper and lower limits of humanity was of particular interest to Enlightenment era thinkers, who struggled to balance the ideals of the French Revolution and the Declaration of Independence with the fact of slavery. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen did not discriminate on the basis of race or sex and had the potential to be applied universally. It was precisely because an appeal to natural rights could only be countered by proof of natural inequality that hair texture, one of the most obvious indicators of physical differences between the races, was seized upon. Nappy hair was demonstrable proof of the fact that neither human physiology nor human nature was uniform and, therefore, that social inequalities could be justified.

Saartjie Baartman, a South African "bushwoman," was exhibited like a circus freak in the Shows of London between 1810 and 1815. The leading French anatomist of the day, George Cuvier, speculated that Baartman might be the "missing link" between the human and animal worlds because of her "peculiar features" including her "enormous buttocks" and "short, curling hair."

In "Notes on the State of Virginia," Thomas Jefferson reflected on why it would be impossible to incorporate blacks into the body politic after emancipation. He concluded it was because of the differences "both physical and moral," chief among them the absence of long, flowing hair.

For a runaway slave, the kink in her hair could mean the difference between freedom in the North and enslavement or worse if she were to be caught and returned to her master. Miscegenation meant that some slaves had skin as light as whites and the rule of thumb was that hair was a more reliable indicator than skin of a person's racial heritage. Thus, runaway slaves often shaved their heads in order to get rid of any evidence of their ancestry and posters advertising for fugitive slaves often warned slave catchers to be on the lookout for runaways with shaved heads : "They might pass for white."

In the late 1960s, after the FBI declared Angela Davis one of the country's 10 most wanted criminals, thousands of other law-abiding, Afro-wearing African-American women became targets of state repression -- accosted, harassed, and arrested by police, the FBI, and immigration agents. The "wanted" posters that featured Davis, her huge Afro framing her face like a halo, appeared in post offices and government buildings all over America, not to mention on television and in Life magazine. Her "nappy hair" served not only to structure popular opinions about her as a dangerous criminal, but also made it possible to deny the rights of due process and habeas corpus to any young black woman, simply on the basis of her hairstyle.

For African-American women, the personal has always been political. What grows out of our head can mean the difference between being a citizen and being a subject; being enslaved or free; alive or dead. As Don Imus found out this week, 300 years of a tangled and painful racial history cannot be washed away with a simple apology.

It's not unusual hair compared to the rest of the world, but it is a minority in the U.S. Which is the only reason it might make sense to find a barber who knows what he's doing with it, and why a barber who serves an ethnic group with hair with a similar texture is probably not a bad proxy for 'won't get fed up and shave my husband's head because it won't lie flat.'

And while African-American hair does come in a range of styles and textures, it tends to be more kinky, and more fragile than even comparably curly hair from people of European descent. It needs different treatment and hair care. That's not to say there's anything wrong with it! But just as a blunt cut won't work on my curls (my hair was NOT curled for the wedding pics. It does that on its own.), a salon designed for people with long straight hair with a loose wavy probably isn't the best place for a person with tight curls to try to get a haircut because the stylist isn't going to have a clue. I know amira knows this site about curls.

A high-end salon with someone trained by Ouidad or Devacurl will make curls look awesome, but that's probably a wasted expense on a man who just wants a haircut.

I used to hate getting my haircut because I had a stylist tell me she felt sorry for me. Just what an awkward teenager needs! But the last few years I've been lucky in that there seem to be more stylists who know what to do with hair that's a bit nuts.

Well at first my hair responded well. My curls were really pretty, loose, and defined. As time went on, they got kinkier and I had a huge problem with shrinkage. No matter what I do though, my hair is really dry. Even if I cut my hair, it remains dry at the ends. I have been using some balm on the ends and that helps but I feel like its frying my hair even more.


I still can't find a decent shampoo/conditioner combo as well.

Your hair might be over conditioned. Have you tried any sort of clarifying treatment?

sereia, I went to an affiliated Devacurl place here in New Haven and I have been very happy with it. And I don't have stinky hair, either! I use the 'No-Poo' line of really gentle shampoo, but even if you don't do that, you can 'wash' your hair with conditioner.

i've got to give something a try then! i want my hair to look like myriam fares! lol

i've got to give something a try then! i want my hair to look like myriam fares! lol

Go to Sephora and see if they have a trial size of Fekkai PM stuff. I got one and it was FANTASTIC. And free is a good price Wazzup jdog?! (I promise to never say that again.)

How expensive is it? I tried kerastas and that was pricey IMO too. I think the small jar was $60. Didn't care for it though.

So far the best results I have got are with this method:

Shampoo/condition hari
while conditioner is in hair, comb it with wide tooth comb
rinse and squeeze excess water out
add styling product, I use garnier curl and shine cream
plop hair into one of those towel turban thingys
go to bed
wake up to bouncy curls

Plopping:

flip head upside down,scrunch curls. put the towel thing on and rest all of your hair on the top of you head. wrap and secure towel turban.

make sure you dont twist hair into the towel

Go to Sephora and see if they have a trial size of Fekkai PM stuff. I got one and it was FANTASTIC. And free is a good price Wazzup jdog?! (I promise to never say that again.)

whats this towel turban thing? a regular towel i do up like a turban or is there a special kind i should try? and shampoo- hari? whats that?

i know i posted in that other thread about my fiance's hair being "nappy" but i haven't read it since and am not surprised someone took offense to our comments. when i read the first person's reply about her husband having nappy hair i instantly thought of the recent controversy and knew someone here would comment. i didn't think our comments were racist at all and don't understand why people are so overly sensitive and feel the need to be so overly PC these days?! (insert a barf emoticon here)

my fiance is african. my fiance has extremely coarse hair. my hair is naturally curly and extremely frizzy, yet a normal thickness. why does this have to be racist? yesterday at an amusement park i saw a tall white man who had a huge head of coarse, dirty blonde, nappy frizzy hair.

btw, that deva curl salon in NYC is no good. lol my stylist in NYC told me their trick is to tell you never to use shampoo. she had many clients who came in after going to deva for a while and they all stank to high heavens! LOL!!!!!!

I think the point is, when someone says it's offensive, who are we to question it? Obviously most people in the thread didn't find it offensive or know that it would be offensive, hence the repetitive use of the term. But when someone says hey, this is offensive to me, they should be given the respect of us shutting up, not fighting with her and telling her she's wrong and to chill out and to be prepared for a backlash. And IMO, a woman here calling her husband's hair nappy is inappropriate to me since no one here is married to an african american, no one here has a husband who's history includes this term.

I didn't see the other thread until after it was closed, but now I see the discussion has continued here, so I'd like to respond.

Peezey's comments are absolutely on target here.

Now of course I don't think anyone who responded is "racist." I think most of the people using the term in the other thread never dreamed that it might be interpeted as something derogatory.

But I think there is a major misunderstanding of what the term "nappy" means to the African-American community, and why this term is considered so insulting when used in reference to black people in the Americas, and why it got the response that it did (as happened with the Don Imus remarks.)

"Nappy" and "natty" (the version used in much of the English-speaking Caribbean) have historically meant "black-type" hair with a negative connotation -- as opposed to the "white-type" (implication: "good") hair. This is of course is an extremely racist idea.

And yes -- sadly -- because of racism, this idea became an entrenched perception in the black community for a very long time -- as if beautiful, natural "black" hair was something to be ashamed of. That is why for years and years, you had black people using all sorts of damaging chemical treatments to try to straighten or "relax" their lovely God-given hair into forced "white" styles.

It wasn't until the "black pride" movement of the 1960s that many African-American people started to feel comfortable with their own natural hair, and began to "show it off" in its full glory. (Of course, such movements started in the Caribbean much earlier -- you saw "dreadlocks" starting to be worn in Jamaica in the 1930s -- even there, this natural hairstyle was still considered far outside the socially acceptable mainstream until perhaps the late 1970s or 1980s.)

The term "nappy" can still be very hurtful -- because of the racist, insulting context. It is far from an innocuous description, although some in the thread certainly didn't realize that. It's true that some members of the black community may use the term among themselves as a "badge of honor" or sign of shared heritage (as some might even use the "N-word,") but it is almost always unacceptable for non-members of that community to use these words as casual descriptive terms.

Dread Natty Dreadlocks.
There is a reason it is called DREAD.

I too missed out ont he conversation last night. I think WOM summed up my feelings on this pretty well so I will only add that it was the ignorance that I found more offensive than the word.

Why do people think "African-American" hair is so unusual compared to the rest of the world? What is African american hair anyway? African americans have hair that comes in all kinds of textures.


sigh...

I think people ought to get out of their own back yards more often - esp those who want to marry into a different culture. I am so tired of hearing generalizations made based on ethnocentric beliefs. I get scared thinking about how many americans live in these single minded culural boxes. Can you spell diversity?

There I said it.

Here was an interesting article from The Boston Globe around the time of the Imus controversy:

Why do you get to ask what is racist to black people? So you are saying that if someone made some stereotypical statement about Jews, you shouldn't be able to be offended or ask people to stop saying it? Let's see, same phrasing as yesterday:

My husband is cheap. Does anyone know who can advise us better?

reply: Go see a Jewish financial manager, they are familiar with that kind of clientelle.


This is CLEARLY out of line and totally unacceptable and anyone who screamed bloody murder because someone posted it would be totally in line and deserving of apologies from the offender.

What is offensive to someone is not for ANY of us to decide. It's not fair to "call them on the race card" because that is just another way to discount their feelings. And the fact that people have african husbands here has nothing to do with it. NONE of our husbands are african-american for whom this term is very offensive when used by white people. Your husbands don't even know this word unless YOU use it.

And let's remember, the person offended by the use of this word did NOT call anyone racist, she said she felt like there were racist things being said. Now, people could have said, we really didn't mean it that way, and just moved on. But this continual insistance that **we** can say what we want because someone we know has curly hair is outrageous. Is it not enough for any of you that black women wrote and wrote and wrote about how hurtful it was when Imus said it?

this? hair turban

good idea, caladan! i'll try this plopping method soon ! LOL
and what was that shampoo, jp? hari?

i've been using phytospecific intensive shampoo/conditioner. its extremely expensive and hard to find but really helped revitalize my hair after a terrible highlight experience when i first moved to NYC and didn't know where to get my hair done. she FRIED my hair. it was like straw and broken all over!

well hopefully this disaster will never happen again! my hair has finally almost all grown out (almost two years later!!!!!!!!)

How can you even compare what Imus said to what Rahma said.

Lord, there was a time that I was almost as addicted to the Curly Girl forum as VJ! Sorta fell off the no poo wagon awhile back, but am still using the shampoo and conditioner that I found there. It's called Activate (created by Latina's who apparently also have dry, frizzy, kinky, hard to manage hair), it's not expensive, has great slippage, is Curly Girl friendly, and while I usually can find it at RiteAid, they also have a website, http://www.activatebeauty.com/eng/index.cfm.

ETA: Crap! I just noticed that Activate has almost tripled it's price online! Don't think it's worth that so it's back to the CG Forums to find something new. Might not be back for awhile. I have heard that Trader Joe's line is actually pretty good and inexpensive so that will probably be what I try next.

Ladies here keep insisting they have curly hair so it's ok to say nappy. I would like to know how many women here have been OPPRESSED or otherwise treated inappropriately BECAUSE OF THEIR HAIR?

My best friend's mother is black and her father is white. My friend has this gorgeous curly hair that she wears naturally curly 360 days of the year. But this is the thing. Anyone and everyone comments on her hair. Strangers, not-so strangers, everyone. People touch it, ask if it's her real hair, ask if she's ever thought of straightening it, as if it's a weave, ask "what are you" so they can figure out why she has kinky hair. Strangers come up and touch her hair!!!!!!!!!! She blows her hair dry straight when she wants to put in big curlers, about 5 times a year. She has a long, successful work history, she has a college degree, she works OT constantly to prove herself. This matters later in the story.

She goes in for an interview for a promotion position. Has a great interview, is really excited, has previously been all but promised the position. She gets back to her office from the interview and her manager tells her the VP just called to say her interview went well, and he was really happy she chose to present herself really professionally that day. She was wearing what she always wears: skirt, heels, white shirt, cardigan. Do you know the only difference in her "professional" appearance that day was that she has BLOWN OUT HER HAIR STRAIGHT?

And she didn't get the job. Someone with less experience and no college degree got the job.

Now, please, someone tell me who but black women faces accosting, invasive questions about her hair, touching her hair, and comments at work that clearly show people have an issue with naturally curly african american hair, and wearing it that way causes you to lose a promotion?

There is NO connection between what you said and what Rahma said. She described her husbands hair as "nappy". She didn't say African American people had nappy hair. What is your big issue with this anyway? People are going to say what they want regardless of how much you argue about it. My hair is not just curly, its nappy, as in very kinky curls that are frizzy. If I choose to descirbe my hair that way, that is my choice.

You are digging and digging to make a connection that isn't there. First you compare Rahma's statements to the statements Imus made and the connection is simply NOT THERE and now you are talking about your friend losing her promotion? Why don't you call a hair salon and see how they descirbe hair in the real world. They have salons that speicalize in asian hair too, would it be racist if I suggested someone with stick straight hair visit a salon that specializes in Asian hair? Her statements were not made to be offensive and if a1 was offened she could have simply said that without implying that she was making a racist statement.

To make the jump from her husband's nappy hair to suggesting he go to an African American barber DOES say African Americans have nappy hair. What else could it possibly mean?

People make racist statements when they don't mean to. Jen said something a1 felt was racist. Did Jen mean to be racist? No, she didn't. Does that mean it wasn't racist? No, it doesn't.

"stick straight" isn't a racially loaded phrase.

I'm not digging, these are real life examples of what african american women face everyday. You clearly don't care and would like to continue to use the word and would like to continue to insist you are right no matter how many african american women post here to say they find it offensive, so go forth with it.

You speak for the inner circle of arabs all the time, so why can't someone speak for african american women on this point (a1, jodo)? You aren't black, you will never be black, you will never know what it feels like to be black, you will never be in the inner circle, so you will never know how it feels.

You've made it clear your intentions and what you think of the word, what more is there for you to say? You can go on and on with your ad hominem attacks, but you're the one who is having a fit over this, not me. I think A1 and Jodo are the ones to listen to here.

I didn't see the other thread until after it was closed, but now I see the discussion has continued here, so I'd like to respond.

Peezey's comments are absolutely on target here.

Now of course I don't think anyone who responded is "racist." I think most of the people using the term in the other thread never dreamed that it might be interpeted as something derogatory.

But I think there is a major misunderstanding of what the term "nappy" means to the African-American community, and why this term is considered so insulting when used in reference to black people in the Americas, and why it got the response that it did (as happened with the Don Imus remarks.)

"Nappy" and "natty" (the version used in much of the English-speaking Caribbean) have historically meant "black-type" hair with a negative connotation -- as opposed to the "white-type" (implication: "good") hair. This is of course is an extremely racist idea.

And yes -- sadly -- because of racism, this idea became an entrenched perception in the black community for a very long time -- as if beautiful, natural "black" hair was something to be ashamed of. That is why for years and years, you had black people using all sorts of damaging chemical treatments to try to straighten or "relax" their lovely God-given hair into forced "white" styles.

It wasn't until the "black pride" movement of the 1960s that many African-American people started to feel comfortable with their own natural hair, and began to "show it off" in its full glory. (Of course, such movements started in the Caribbean much earlier -- you saw "dreadlocks" starting to be worn in Jamaica in the 1930s -- even there, this natural hairstyle was still considered far outside the socially acceptable mainstream until perhaps the late 1970s or 1980s.)

The term "nappy" can still be very hurtful -- because of the racist, insulting context. It is far from an innocuous description, although some in the thread certainly didn't realize that. It's true that some members of the black community may use the term among themselves as a "badge of honor" or sign of shared heritage (as some might even use the "N-word,") but it is almost always unacceptable for non-members of that community to use these words as casual descriptive terms.

Dread Natty Dreadlocks.
There is a reason it is called DREAD.

I have straight hair and I'm offended by the term "stringy"!!!!

kidding

peezey, your general point, that African-American women have had a long and difficult history with their hair and that 'nappy' is a loaded term that shouldn't be used casually is correct, but it's just not true that it's only African-American women who have issues with people coming up and touching their hair, asking about it, and commenting how much more professional it looks when it's straightened. I have had people pull my curls while standing in an elevator on the way to work, and if you read about women and hair, curly hair for a long time has been considered 'ethnic' (meaning Jewish, Latina, biracial or Italian, mostly) and thus not professional. Most of the girls I worked with would blow it out straight and I get comments from strangers walking through the neighborhood often enough that it's not remarkable. One anecdote I heard was of a girl with curly hair being at a party in DC, a party with a bunch of buttoned-up pols, and someone remarking that she must be a Democrat, because no Republican would wear her hair like that. The political parties cited of course don't matter, but women's hair in general is a touchy issue.

It's just a whole hell of a lot worse for African-American women.

On the other hand, I'm uncomfortable with any form of argument that says 'X is a member of group Y and therefore is the final authority on information about Y', because it seems to treat all members of the group as alike and very Other rather than individuals who have their own preferences and experiences. 'Nappy' is offensive because of its history, not by fiat, you know? Just like you can't decide that the n-word isn't offensive by finding one black guy whom it doesn't bother.

Apologies if I've given offense to anyone. I'd usually agree whole-hearted with peezey on something like this, but 'nappy' seems a lot more borderline to me than the n-word which no one is even bold enough to type.

Nice picture I used stringy hair on purpose. Since people can make generalizations about the African-American community, I made one too. I find this entire thread offensive. I did not find the other thread offensive at all. I found some statements that I thought were way more offensive than what was in that thread. I would hate to make generalizations about an entire race when I am not from that race. I would never sum up all white people and there are an awful lot of white people in my family.