Throughout the day, I find myself constantly thinking about some concepts we discuss in class. It is usually the smallest of encounters that cause a stream of consciousness to flood my brain, as I link one idea to the next to the next. That was precisely what I caught myself doing the other day.
I was in class with one of my good friends who happens to be an international student from Korea. I noticed that she had been staring at me for a few minutes, and I was about to ask her what was wrong when she blurted out a question first:
“Do you perm your hair?”
It took me a while to understand what she meant— I had to ask for clarification on the word “perm”— but I eventually realized that she was intrigued by my wavy hair. I never really had anyone give my hair that much attention. To be honest, there is nothing special about it: it is black, not too short or too long, and curly or wavy depending on the day.
My friend quickly explained that she had never seen hair like that back home in Korea. She was intrigued to the point where she thought it couldn’t even be natural. That seemed interesting to me because I always thought I had one of the most common types of hair, or at least that’s how it was back in Brazil. I then started thinking about how hair can be related to one’s race, or at least one’s racial lineage. I know for a fact my hair is the way it is due to the diversity in my family; although my origins are mostly European, I also have some black and indigenous ancestors. My hair, as I see it, is the consequence of generations and generations of people from different backgrounds. I can safely say that each person in my immediate family has a different kind of hair: my brother’s, for example, is lighter and curlier than mine. And that was just the way it always was for me. My friend, on the other hand, told be that most people in her family had hair that matched in color and texture, sometimes only varying in style. I asked her about her lineage, and she told me that as far as she could remember it was mostly Korean.
After that exchange, I started finding it fascinating how hair can show so much about where we come from.
Whiteness in USAmerican Culture 
I’ve also thought about the idea of hair as a sign of someone’s racial identity. I come from a mixed background, my mom is white and my dad is black. While I’ve seemed to have gotten a mix of their features, I got my hair pretty much from my mom, just slightly curlier. My sister on the other hand got her hair more from my dad, with very tight curls and more stereotypically African American. It is funny how even though we have the same heritage we represent it in different ways. I talked about in a previous post about “passing” and part of that is my hair I think. In class we talked about our privileges and one of mine is being able to walk into any hair salon and they know how to work with my hair, besides every time someone saying “oh my gosh, you have so much hair” (thanks Mom). My sister on the other hand has to find certain people to do her hair because not everyone is either comfortable or was never taught how to work with her style of hair. Sometimes I would complain about how much hair I have, but I realized that in the world we live in my hair makes my life easy in a way my sister can’t have.
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This blog post was very interesting and thought-provoking, as it highlights a small feature of one’s body that associates them with a certain race. African-Americans are thought to have curlier hair, while the Caucasian population is believed to display straighter, thinner hair. This post articulates this idea, which also is responsible for the natural segregation of the barbershops and barbers in the United States. Nowadays, many barbers specialize in cutting the hair of either race, while those looking for a haircut may only go to a barbershop that they are comfortable going to, regardless of whether the barber cuts their race’s hair. A week ago, I was looking to get a trim, and my friend was having his barber cut his hair, to which I inquired, “Does he cut white hair?” The answer was no. Another difference can be found in the culture differences that exist between black and white barbershops. The different environment can be seen in films like Barbershop, where a black barbershop can be much more lively, and are almost like a hang out of sorts, while white barbershops are for customers to get in and get out quickly. It’s very fascinating that small differences in appearance can bring about a whole system that separates races from each other.
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Your post struck me as interesting because when I think of my own hair, I don’t think of it as defining my racial identity. My hair is mid-length, straight, and light brown; it is not very unique. However, looking at the generations of my family before, I realize that it is quite similar. I have the same color hair as my grandma, mother, aunts, sister and basically everyone on my mother’s side of the family. This makes sense because my mother’s side of the family is 100% Italian. My brothers and everyone on my father’s side of the family, on the other hand, all have dark brown, nearly black colored hair; this is due to the fact that my dad’s side of the family is mostly German. Since many of the ancestors in America are from European countries, such as Italy or Germany, many people have similarly looking hair, hence my false idea that my hair is not a defining feature of my racial identity.
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After skin color, hair and eye color seem to be the most commonly noted physical markers of racial or ethnic difference. While noting these differences isn’t inherently problematic (indeed, this kind of biological diversity developed through environmental adaptation and natural geographical segregation over several millennia prior to the “Age of Exploration” and then colonization), the idea that a person’s “race” can be successfully determined based on an assessment of the features has a long and violent history (think back to “The Quadroons,” for instance).
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