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.

Oh I am mixed heritage with 'exotic' hair and I would find it rude of someone to do to me what the lady did to the woman who wrote the article simply because she touched without asking. Otherwise, I have accepted that people may comment on my hair both positively and negatively.

Yes, touching without permission is not acceptable, but it has nothing to do with race - it's just rude and insensitive.

Percy

EXOTIC

Yes, but if you are talking about their mistreatment of blonde people which was my original analogy then you are really talking about the WWII era.

Let me start again. Let's say you're a black american. Most likely, your ancestors were slaves (in some part of the world). Your grandparents and parents suffered under segregation. You yourself probably suffer from casual racism and discrimination on a frequent basis. Now some daft lady comes along and wants to touch your exotic hair. Is that going to seem like harmless curiosity, or yet another manifestation of the fact that throughout the centuries white people have held positions of power and privilege over black people?

Now let's say you're a blonde American. You probably have no idea whether blonde people ever suffered at the hands of the Japanese. Your family has probably not ever suffered. You probably aren't discriminated against by Japanese people. So a Japanese person wanting to touch your hair doesn't have any historical or personal resonance.

Of course people can carry history personally. It's not abstract history, it's the history of their families. That history lives on today in the racism that they face.

Yes, I know what it literally means, but we were talking about the way it is used. Plenty of words are used differently from their original meanings.

It's in no way racist but it is rather weird, patronising, 'gushing' and crosses a line into personal space when you start reaching out and touching stranger's hair.

In my mind, it's no different to copping a feel of a pregnant woman's bump and we all know how annoying that is when strangers try to do it.

I'm off, anyway. Some people just look for offence and I can't be doing with that sort of nonsense.

Exotic it used to mean foreign all the time. Exotic holidays, exotic food etc.

Being told that "it's nothing to do with race" by somebody who has never experienced racism (if thats the case, Percy) is another example of white people underestimating their own privilege in these matters. It is basically dismissing the feelings and lived reality of black women. There's no intention to be hurtful, but the power imbalance is still there.

Percy did you read the link?

It explained its usage in a colonial context, not its exact definition.

PercyFilth' it's probably best that you're off - you're clearly coming at this from a position of privilege and have not had to suffer casual racism on probably a daily basis. And you so clearly have no idea what it feels like. Clearly, since you throw around phrases like, 'bollocks, I've never heard...' (thereby dismissing millions of people's experiences in one fell swoop, and 'some people just look for offence'; if you get this sort of thing all the time, then over time the effect is obviously going to be much greater than this one-off anecdote, which out of context looks unimportant to someone with no sense of empathy, at least.

Of course it is patronising. Reaching out and just touching someone. You do that at a petting zoo, to animals, to small children, as evidenced on is very thread. You do not just reach out and touch 'exotic' (read: different) adults you don't know from Adam. You just don't. And then to be offended when the person isn't willing to comply...!

Oh and OP - YABU. But hopefully you realise that by now.

I always think of exotic as unusually beautiful, I
Wouldn't go around asking to touch people though

I agree with moomin. If I heard that someone had been described as exotic looking, I would expect to see a beautiful striking person. I dont see it as a negative comment in any way at all. It is a compliment.

To a white person, yes, the connotations seem much more positive. But that's kind of missing the point, I think. If black women connect it to colonialism and their experience of racism, it is surely polite to respect that, and not tell them to shut up and stop taking offence, just because that's not the way you meant it.

Gotta love people not on the receiving end of everyday racism coming on to say, 'oh no, that' not racist' instead of actually listening and maybe internalising what's being said and then just not doing it again.

Yes - EleanorRathbone summed it up well. Just because it's "nice" doesn't make the act less racist. The entire concept of exotic is othering a person and wrapped up in that the current beauty standard (white) is the norm and everything else is up for public comment and consumption. The demand to touch it (and calling her rude when she wouldn't let her) just continues to show the sense of privilege in not realizing how another person would feel and viewing her feelings on it as lesser than her own.

A few good articles discussing about this: here, here, here, here...

Yes but alot of people probably don't know that, but then even though for me it brings thoughts of beautiful people it's not a word I would use to describe someone and it never entered my mind that it might have racial connotations

To me using 'exotic' in that context = foreign/ not from round here. Exotic is used to describe imported fruit, spices etc and used as shorthand for sunny and not in Europe in holiday brochures.

It's a step away from asking where someone's from, and when they say Finsbury Park saying, no, I mean originally.

My sister did that recently; 'Where are you from'?
'Alperton'
'No, I mean where are you from ^
really^

DH used to have waist length locks (dreads) and cut them off because he was pissed of with women wanting to touch them all the time. He didn't (and doesnt) see it as racist, just bloody annoying as he was usually working at the time!

"random strangers feel it is ok to compliment my hair "

The cunts.

A black woman once stopped me to tell me my pale, auburn haired DS (about 1 at the time) looked "just like a porcelain doll".

So was that racist too then?

Are you being deliberately obtuse FolkGirl, or are you just a bit slow?

Did this woman ask to touch your DS's hair or skin? Did he say no? Did she go ahead and try to touch it anyway? Did she use a word which has negative connotations, like 'exotic'? Did she do all of these things?

No? Well, then...

Actually I have been subjected to racism, perhaps not for a whole lifetime but for 6 years of my life while I lived in Japan. I also have a mixed race daughter so please don't tell me because I am white I don't know what racism feels like.

Where I lived in Japan they had signs up in the onsen's (steam baths) saying no foreigners, they had right wing cars with speakers on the top which would drive around neighbourhoods were foreigners lived telling them to get out. They had announcements on public transport & in shoping malls saying foreigners where about and that they should watch their belongings. I was assumed to be a Russian prostitute and so hated going out on my own after dark as was always approached. I was spat at in the street & had elderly people get up and move away from me on buses & trains.

I was described as 'exotic' and I still found it flattering because to Japanese people I was exotic and looked different to them (there's no denying that) so therefore interesting to some people.