I was recently telling some of my comrades that I am fast approaching a decision to cut my hair. For one, it just keeps growing and I don’t know what [I’m going] to do with it. That is still less annoying than the tired questions I get asking me the same thing. The more substantive issue, has of course, to do with somewhat deeper and underlying tensions.

I have been extremely reluctant to write a post even remotely touching on the topic of hair. At the forefront are my own personal reservations – in the sense that I did not want to overly indulge [publicly] in my own self-absorption or journey as it relates specifically to hair. But more than that, what has also been at the forefront of this reluctance, is a feeling of not being, in many ways, the more directly affected person when it comes to the ideas people have about hair, and black hair. Its politics, cultural significance and expression; its forms of signifying social status, respectability, and consequently how it also functions as a mechanism to exclude or cast out. I can circumvent some of these ideas, or at least to some degree I can choose to. The extent to which I decide not to is sometimes political, and not necessarily personal. Nor are my choices necessarily constrained by social, cultural and economic factors beyond my control.

For example, most of the conversations I have observed about hair tend to focus on black women, particularly young black women and girls. And for good reason. Hair is directly associated to expected social norms and standards of beauty which are essential for social acceptance, reward and validation. As such, it is a point of deep insecurity and feelings of self-worth, value and identity. Because I have never been at the receiving end of having to live up to these expectations, even though I can empathise with those insecurities (and as any other person experienced them in other contexts), I thought it would be at the very least irrelevant, and at best imprudent to add my voice/contribution because I felt there were more important things to be said. To some extent this will remain true for a long time to come.

In keeping with that spirit, this post will not necessarily personalise my own journey as it relates to hair because that is besides the specific point I want to make. That is part of a much larger story, and as stated above, in so far as personal experiences go I think there are more important stories to tell. I am not self-censoring as this remains a personal blog site. It is however a judgement call I have made. I would rather prefer to focus on the political significance of hair as I extrapolate from a few localised experiences, which are still very much rooted in experiential moments, even if only through observation.

Dehumanised perception

I vividly remember the day I decided to leave my hair uncombed, leading to what it has become today. It was a few years ago, on a Thursday afternoon. I was heading to the university’s upper campus for a committee meeting when I saw this man who was walking either towards or coming down the pathway leading to Devil’s peak from the pedestrian bridge on the N2. Initially, I thought he was homeless. He had the archetypal ‘look’: long hair, somewhat dread-locked or ‘unkempt’, also barefoot with clothes which looked dirty and carrying a rucksack. In retrospect, he might have been one of the Herbs-man who walk around Cape Town and often hike the mountain for herbs and so forth. I can’t say with certainty.

I remember two things. The first was an awareness of how I so closely mirrored this man’s image; and the ideas and thoughts that people would automatically assume or attach to a person who had that visual appearance*. I knew it was problematic, but I felt jarred and somewhat unsettled. I was also a bit scared because I knew some of the assumptions I had already made about this person, and how these would later be made of me too.

Dehumanised perception has been defined as a failure to spontaneously consider the mind of another person: “social cognition – considering someone’s mind – recognizes the other as a human being subject to moral treatment”[1]. In retrospect, I say it was problematic because even though I do not know for certain, I can say with some degree of likelihood that the man was homeless. But more than that, that my position on the social ladder accorded me social currency that he [probably] wouldn’t otherwise have had by virtue of me being a university student. This means that I could dispel some of these assumptions by precisely pointing to the fact that I was a student, at UCT*. Or, that where they were made, sometimes, they may not have had any material consequences on my being, opportunities and so forth (though that of course is less true).

And to this day, because I am not actually homeless, the physical appearance can also complicate things. For example, even though my hair is messy, in contrast to the typical casting associated with homelessness, I’ll likely have clean clothes, wearing shoes without any holes/patches or grime on them. And I won’t be carrying around a characteristic checked rucksack bag which also looks dirty. I also probably won’t be going around looking for food in dustbins, sleeping on pavements, or pushing a trolley. It is this fact of ‘looking’ homeless with the hair whilst not being homeless which leads me to a discussion on how this sort of aesthetic can lead to people battling a dissonance which comes in the form of what has been called “dehumanised perception”.

The second bit, the more important part I remember about that Thursday, was the man’s response when we crossed paths. He smiled. Just a simple smile. But warm enough to register it was directed at me. And it felt kind.

There have been neurological studies which have examined how different regions in the brain respond when interacting or confronted with a homeless person. When we communicate, the regions of the brain associated with feeling and empathy are activated to connect with and understand what the other person is saying. It has been observed that when ‘people’ confront homeless people – for example when homeless people are brought into their field of vision: ‘people’ disengage the region of the brain which would make them empathise or connect with that person. There is a level of emotional detachment which proceeds.

Now again, I’m not homeless, my mom just jokingly reminds me that I look like I sleep under a bridge. It is however the moments I’ve observed – when I see people visibly engaged in an inner conflict, when they are not sure how they should relate to me, trying to decide on the level of respect, value and so forth to be given to me at first glance, that has brought me to this piece.

At first, I found it mild and harmless. I thought that perhaps people are a bit curious when they stare, or maybe even intrigued. The moments which stick out are when someone’s face is contorted, into a frown, and you can see they are battling to understand what’s going on. The worst part is when someone doesn’t even try to hide that they are staring, or that they have a baffled expression on their face. I find that annoying when I’m in a less tolerant mood, and sometimes my demeanour becomes slightly aggressive. But on most days, I’m unbothered. And I find this confusion so to speak to not be ill-intentioned or maligned. All that was until I came across this idea of dehumanised perception.

In retrospect, a lot of these experiences make sense understood within the lexicon of people trying to decide how they should see you. Or rather, if they should see you at all as a person to be accorded dignity and ‘value’. What assumptions they should make about you, the ideas they attach. But like I said, things are a bit more complicated than they seem. For the most part, however, people tend to think I’m Rasta, along with all the other bad stereotypes people attach to that. But there also positive ideas associated with that too. That story, of The Rastafarian Movement and the lessons from Jamaican contributions to the liberation struggle, is for another day.

I, of course, am not immune to dehumanised perception when faced with homeless people. In fact, on my part it’s a bit of a double-edged sword because there is a dual conflict. On the one hand, I can empathise with how people “see” them. I know this is a negative image, therefore on the other hand, there is a tension to not want to be associated with that ‘image’. There is also an unspoken awareness, an acknowledgement, not often, but it’s there, when the dividing lines between me and ‘them’ are very thin and narrow. Especially because I am apparently “Rasta”. Everyone therefore freely feels as if they can shout “ahoy, ja rasta mahn” when they see me. Or just walk up to give me a fist bump. But I’m not Rasta either.

So, in the end, I was trying to explain to the comrades that no one likes to look like they are not someone’s child.

*Postscript. Back then, the image of what’s now referred to as the ‘protest aesthetic’ – mostly commonly associated with unkempt hair, was not yet fashionable or synonymous with being a cool kid. This is important to register because whilst my hair has grown a bit since then, it didn’t look as [impressive] as it does now. There was less volume and definition. Instead, it was more like short, scrawny little sprouts of stunted hair. I was also very strange back then – no more than I am currently I suppose. I particularly had this thing where I only used to wear sandals for footwear. All the time. Even when it was raining, or in winter – and Cape Town winters can be biting.

Notes

1. Lasana T. Harris, Susan T. Fiske, 2011. Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3915417/