Son's hair is "cultural appropriation"

[Jourdain11]

So as not to drop feed: my father's family are from North Africa and he had the sort of tightly-curled hair which some North African people have. I have wavy-curly hair and look European. My husband is English and all three of my children have his fair colouring. However, some trick of genetics has meant that my son (5) has inherited the tightly-curled hair gene. He is very blond and usually his hair is cut quite close to his head, but when it grows out a bit, he has these amazing blonde curls standing around his head.

Anyway, I was a bit taken aback when a friend said the other day that we'd better get his hair cut before he starts Y1 because it might offend people! She said it's cultural appropriation for him, a white boy, to be wearing his hair "in an Afro". I said that seemed pretty harsh given that his hair just grows like that and it's part of his genetic make-up. She responded that people seeing him will just see "a white boy with an Afro" and it would be offensive.

Am I being unreasonable to find this ridiculous? My poor DS is going to offend people wherever he goes just because of the way his hair grows? Or am I being completely out of touch and insensitive?!

I'd be offended by what your 'friend' said!

"Cultural appropriation" is a ridiculous concept, and can just bore off. Your DS's hair sounds amazing.

Oh and your friend is an idiot.

@Lifeisgenerallyfun
Cultural appropriation as a concept is a pile of shit in the first place, even more so in this case. Tell her to keep her woke opinions to herself.

I completely agree in this case it's a pile of shite, but why do you think it is in all cases?

I despair of the woke generation. In my day, we considered imitation to be the sincerest form of flattery!
If a white guy deliberately styles his hair into an afro, he’s showing that he loves the style, not “appropriating African culture”. He isn’t stopping Africans from wearing it themselves.
We’ve all enjoyed trying different cultures’ cuisine, fashion and music, often fusing them with our own. Joy in diversity, as they say on Star Trek.
How miserable and sanctimonious to say only an African can have an afro, only a Mexican can wear a poncho. What next - you have to be German to be allowed to cook sausages?

Your "friend" is a woke dickhead. Ignore her!

@Babdoc

I think the point is that having an afro or anything else that identifies you as person of colour can lead to disadvantage and racism.

The white guy with the pretend afro can comb it out in job interviews, if he's trying to be taken seriously at A&E, at parents evening, if the police stop and search his car for drugs... For a black person it's their life, not a costume that can be taken off.

She's not your friend.
Tell her to fuck off.

Biracial children are beautiful.

I have one. 29 now.....

Those racists will die out, thank God.

I would bluntly text back reminding her that you and your son are part African, you are offended by her racist conduct towards YOU and about your child and that you now consider her a racist and a thick twunt, wording optional.

Christ, if this is real, she is absoutely insane.

@Babdoc

We’ve all enjoyed trying different cultures’ cuisine, fashion and music, often fusing them with our own.

I think one of the issues is that a lot of white people are happy to take and enjoy the bits of black culture they like - cool hairstyles, dancing (Vogue and madonna, anyone?), hip hop, soul food etc - while not fully embracing the presence of black people in their community, or even continuing to oppress them.

Just reply with it is HIS heritage....

My niece had tight curls that grew upwards in an Afro style, maybe me SIL should have shaved her head.

@Foliageeverywhere122 because, throughout history ever culture has borrowed from everyone else, fashions, food,language, religions are all an amalgamation of different cultures separated by time, geography and thoughts, conquerors have absorbed culture from those they have conquered and vice versa. It helped different cultures merge together, to appreciate what others did and understand it. In short this act helped harmonise the world.

Telling people they can’t have a hairstyle, clothing. Language, religion etc because it “belongs” to a different group of people, firstly because it probably “belonged” at least in part to someone else first and secondly because splitting people by saying only certain groups can wear x, have certain hairstyles etc is diversionary, it is putting people in boxes, it is quite simply divide and rule.

To truly move forward as a united human race, to reach its very best Best potential, we should be willing to share ideas, thoughts, everything. By jealousy guarding anything for one particular group based on arbitrary differences we are preventing humanity from achieving its best.

That’s two PPs who can’t see the difference between admiring and copying a foreign culture or oppressing it! If I wear a poncho, I’m not oppressing Mexicans, ffs, and whether I can “take it off for job interviews” is wildly irrelevant.
Nobody has put a patent or trademark on particular clothes or hairstyles- anyone can wear what the hell they like. I enjoy cooking Indian, Chinese and Indonesian food, but those countries don’t have a monopoly on the bloody ingredients! And I’m neither oppressing nor insulting them by eating it - I’m complimenting them on their taste.
I do wish youngsters would get over their silly virtue signalling and post colonial guilt over the behaviour of ancestral generations, and just learn to embrace all cultures as a source of human enjoyment in diversity.
A racist 19th century slave owner wouldn’t have been seen dead in an Afro haircut - they wouldn’t have admired and copied it, they would have despised it. It’s surely a sign of our greater enlightenment that we appreciate and incorporate such styles in a spirit of equality, no?
Would you object if an African wore a British bowler hat? Or does appropriation only go one way?

Or does appropriation only go one way?

Well, yeah, actually it does.

Plenty of people have been abused for getting uppity/trying to be white/deceiving people if they are lightskinned and have a less than cartoonish stereotype appearance or accent.

A woman of Ghanaian heritage speaking in a perfect RP accent due to her education, home life and so on, will still have her accent remarked upon frequently because it's not 'what we were expecting'. As though she doesn't have any business sounding like it.

A white bloke doing an impression of a Jamaican accent isn't doing it because it was his home accent, or because the people who taught him at school used the patterns, rhythms and tones or the accent, he's doing it because the accent is 'funny'. To take the piss out of it and, quite understandably, it doesn't go down well with normal people.

Your friend is wrong, you can’t “appropriate” something you were born with. I agree with prior posters to tell her to F off.

@MitziK

Or does appropriation only go one way?

Well, yeah, actually it does.

Plenty of people have been abused for getting uppity/trying to be white/deceiving people if they are lightskinned and have a less than cartoonish stereotype appearance or accent.

A woman of Ghanaian heritage speaking in a perfect RP accent due to her education, home life and so on, will still have her accent remarked upon frequently because it's not 'what we were expecting'. As though she doesn't have any business sounding like it.

A white bloke doing an impression of a Jamaican accent isn't doing it because it was his home accent, or because the people who taught him at school used the patterns, rhythms and tones or the accent, he's doing it because the accent is 'funny'. To take the piss out of it and, quite understandably, it doesn't go down well with normal people.

It doesn’t only go one way if you look at it globally. It depends on which group holds the power in the geographical area.

So in China and Japan, we appropriate western culture frequently because it’s cool to walk around with English written on our clothes and to try western fashions. Western world has zero power there and white westerners are much discriminated minorities.

But in western country, it’s the opposite. We ethnic chinese are the minority and it is our culture being appropriated.

Btw, did you know that there are white Jamaicans who do have Jamaican accents? No country is 100% one race any more so we need to stop making assumptions about the race of nationalities.

You need to reply again and shut down this conversation with both facts 1) Your son IS mixed race and 2) Someone’s natural hair can never be cultural appropriation anyway

Perhaps you need to be explicit and explain that your son is 25% of North African descent, hence, the tight curls, as she clearly isn't getting it. You may have to breakdown that North Africans are mixed themselves: Sub-saharan, Berber, Arab, French, etc.

If you permed your son's hair and dyed it black, gave him a traditionally Nigerian name and dressed him in some traditional Igbo clothing then she might have a point!

It depends on the intention but generally speaking, Nigerians wouldn't care. They're not big on 'cultural appropriation' because there's so many different cultures in Nigeria (Igbo being one of the main ones and there are also diverse cultures within each main culture). They're used to "cultural appropriation" as no big deal/sharing and everyone respects as well as borrows from each (unless they've been raised in the UK/US or with such ideas).

Unless you're mocking someone's culture, you're good. If anything, you'll be welcome as someone who loves Nigeria enough to emulate all those things (Doubt anyone would do so if they didn't care, so it's about intention and what your aim is).

Also doubt Nigerians have the monopoly on black curly hair.

OP, regardless of heritage, your son's hair grows as it grows. End of. Anyone offended by what someone's own natural hair is doing needs to take a seat and you shouldn't be afraid to tell them that. It doesn't matter if you're part African or not. It's his natural hair.

1. Even if it wasn't his natural hair and he wanted to make his hair look that way, cool. It's a positive. Yes, you'll offend some people. Find others.

3.Your friend seems to be missing the point greatly on what cultural appropriation is. If you have the energy, you can "educate" this friend, seeing as you say she thinks she's being kind and helpful. Therefore, she's only being ignorant and not trying to be mean.

I think cultural appropriation is only about 1% of what many people claim as cultural appropriation - meaning it's not as rampant as some suggest it is. Most people are only trying to take part in/share/enjoy what they like. It's okay to borrow from each other's culture.

As a side note, I find it amusing when people go on about 'gorgeous/amazing blonde curls'. I never see that said about any other colour of curly hair except blonde. Makes me think the description is more about the curls being blonde rather than the curls themselves.

Further to PlanDeRaccordement's post, we had a thread on here a couple of years or so ago, where a woman had had a complaint made to her HR about her. She'd been interviewing a black man, who had complained about her accent, saying she was mocking him with a Barbadian accent.

The OP of that thread was white, so I can see why the bloke might have thought she was mocking him, but she actually was from Barbados, had been born and grown up there, hence the accent. Her HR people gave the bloke a noncommittal reply, because of course, they can't penalise people for the natural accents they have. Can't remember the username now.

Your friend is batshit.

It is his natural hair type, not a hair style aping another culture so it can’t be cultural appropriation. Your son has North African heritage anyway so again it’s not cultural appropriation.

Oh, and as a complete aside to the thread, I know I read that some posters were asking where they could get products for curly hair.

I thought of this thread when I went into my local Superdrug today, and there was new, big section in the shampoo area that had a selection of the brands mentioned - Cantu and others. Might be worth looking in your local Superdrugs.

Too woke to function