To think someone saying your hair is exotic & wanting to touch it is not racist?

[BoobleBeep]

I'm wondering about this, I have tried to link the articale by Hannah Pool in Grazia but can't find it online.

It was an article on casual racism in the UK and she cited an incident where she had been in the womens toilets and a white women had said how beautiful and exotic her hair was and asked if she could touch it (whilkst reaching out and touching it), Hannah Pool said no you can't and teh women said she was rude.

I lived in Japan for years and had blonde hair back then. Lots of people saidhow exotic my hair was and people liked to touch it sometimes, it didn't bother me at all. My daughter is mixed race and has gorgeous very thick black hair and I love touching it as it is so different to my own.

Not racist but there's something odd about it. Like the person is highlighting the difference between you and them and wants to touch you. Like a zoo animal.

I'm mixed race and have had this a lot. I do not like it.

I don't go up to friends who are European and ask to touch their hair, despite not knowing what it feels like!

I think there is something a bit not-quite-right about the word exotic -- somehow a little bit too close to implying 'you don't really belong here'. A more neutral word (like beautiful) certainly shouldn't offend though.

But asking to touch it, I can see why that would get annoying. Anyone got a pregnancy bump they'd be willing to let me stroke?

I wouldn't want to be called "exotic" or have a stranger touch my hair. Would be pleased if someone complimented me on my hair though :)

Being mixed race myself I find the word "exotic" to be a mixed blessing. Of course it's a lovely word in itself but sometimes you don't want to be reminded that you're different. No quite sure why. Maybe because the "exotic" looks of womanhood are the same looks you may have been bullied about at school.

I wish I was "exotic" instead of pale and mousey

I don't like 'exotic' and I hate it when people touch my skin and hair and compare it to their own. There is something a bit 'oooh aren't you different but its fine for me to say so because I'm saying something nice too. It feels racist when people do it. There is something a bit zoo animal/freak show about wanting to touch an 'exotic' person.

I think the fact that the woman called Hannah Poole rude, when she was so rude herself, is interesting.

She obviously felt entitled to touch HP's hair and when HP imposed her own physical boundaries and told her she couldn't, the other woman perceived it as rude. In other words, she felt that HP didn't have the right to decide on her own physical boundaries and the fact that she was doing so, was rude.

I don't know whether that's because she's a raging racist or just some oddball with no bloody boundaries who thinks she's entitled to touch everyone. I do think that it's casual racism (as opposed to vicious militant racism), in that the woman has the privilege of not having to think about whether being "othered" in that way (exotic) might be a bit weird or uncomfortable for HP. She probably didn't mean any offence at all, but casual racism isn't about wanting to cause offence is it, it's about having the privilege of not having the faintest idea what might be accidentally offensive and expecting someone to receive what you say on your terms rather than their's.

people wanting touch you can be odd and if someone wanted to stroke my hair in the batrooom I would think they were odd

Yes definitely, it's not at all rude to object to a stranger touching you like that.

It is a bit like the unwanted touching and comments (oh you're so BIG) that pregnant women get. People might not mean to be rude when they do it, but they're definitely crossing boundaries that they wouldn't (presumably) with someone who wasn't pregnant. And you can see how that would make a pregnant women feel like they thought she was public property, or less fully human somehow.

good post Eleanor. I do remember thinking "meh" when I read the article, but I can really see what you are saying.

"Exotic" means strikingly strange/unusual, extraordinary, foreign etc.

Not sure that's without racism when applied to a person.

It is a little bit racist, yes.

Excellent post Eleanor, you hit the nail on the head.

Great post Eleanor.

I do think it's racist, even if unintentionally so.

It's not the same as Japanese people asking to touch blonde hair, because the Japanese didn't spend several centuries kidnapping and enslaving blonde people, in the process treating them like possessions and doing whatever they liked with their bodies.

Of course its racist. Exotic? Bet she thought she has a good sense of rhythm too

Sorry to disagree bohemian but you should read up on Japanese war crimes.

And I have never kidnapped or enslaved any black people, and refuse to carry that guilt on my shoulders. I work with majority German colleagues and I don't treat them all as potential Nazis.

However, I think the context is important here, I've heard a similar conversation/situation in the work place that was meant to be deliberately patronising and single someone out. One of my workmates had extensions and her boss wrapped her hand in the pony tail and pulled it, saying ooh it must be lovely to be able to fake straight hair whenever you like, i am just stuck with mine. It embarrassed her, and singled her out, and some of her hair came out. She was furious but didn't think it was something she could feasibly complain about.

I am also not a great lover of univited physical contact. Someone comes out of a nightclub toilet and wants to touch your hair...eurghhh.

There is bound to be curiosity of things that differ from your "norm". My partner is British West Indian and I find his chest hair fascinating, and he laughs at my dead straight electrical wire pubes .

Straight pubes - sounds very exotic, won't ask to touch them!

I do know about Japanese war crimes. Please note I said several centuries

And by no means do I expect anyone living today to feel guilty about slavery. But I do think people should show some sensitivity.

Seriously, like a gonks head. I hasten to add I haven't come across a lot of pubes in my time, but I am yet to see any that match mine in length and consistency.

I don't usually get requests in nightclub toilets by other women demanding to feel them, perhaps I should flash my "exoticness" a little bit more?

Generally I would put a lot down to ignorance, not that it's acceptable in any way. Yesterday on a visit to The Netherlands a female Dutch colleague described one of their store managers as a "big negro teddy bear." and they were quite offended when I picked them up on it. They then wrnt on to complain about requests to ban the "Black Peters" that were accompanying Sinter Klaas at the moment.

Longest lunch I ever had. Should have just stayed in the office and plaited my pubes.

exotic is often used to say say 'not white' and also infers not the norm. If I had a £1 for everytime I heard 'name x wouldnt suit my anglo saxon child its a bit exotic' or one of the many variations I would be a wealthy woman. Its also a bit of lazy to assue that because someone has an ethnic background they are over sensitive to racist remarks.

Japanese war crimes were not only related to the 20th century, but date back to the Imperialist 19th so several centuries of torture, human experimentation, cannibalism, live burials, POW mistreatment and murder, millions and millions of lives.

But as I said History is something to learn from but not to carry personally. There aren't many countries who don't carry a bloody history.

I would still however find anyone invading my personal space to feel my own or my dc's hair offensive and depending on the context of the situation the journalist was in, and her feeling during the situation it could be construed as racism.

Agree with EleanorRathbone and subsequent posters. 'Exotic' used to designate a person establishes the speaker as the norm and the 'exotic' person as 'other'/'foreign'/'deviant' from the norm - even if the intention is to admire rather than attack. And absolutely on casual racism mostly involving no ill intent, but but simply ('simply'!) not interrogating its own sense of entitlement ('I will call you something that establishes me as the norm and you as the non-norm').

"I remember an African girl I knew who hated being described as Exotic because she said it made her feel like some animal in a zoo"

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Exotic has been a term used to describe anything not considered the norm by English standards during colonial times so it has some very negative and patronising qualities. It also removes somethings identity and just bunches it into this mass of 'exotic' IYSWIM.

Just read on and realised others had already explained and in a much better way.

Bollocks. I've never heard 'exotic' used as anything other than a compliment. It implies beauty or glamour. It's not a word that is used to describe anything unpleasant or ugly.

This journalist - was it her actual hair or its style that excited comment? Was it in cornrows, for instance? I can understand someone wanting to touch that, it's a texture thing. But it would be the same if a white person had their hair doen that way, which is not unknown.