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BEAST OF BURDEN SERIES
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heritage (n.) c. 1200, "that which may be inherited," from Old French iritage, eritage, heritage "heir; inheritance, ancestral estate, heirloom," from heriter "inherit," from Late Latin hereditare, ultimately from Latin heres (genitive heredis) "heir" (see heredity). Meaning "condition or state transmitted from ancestors" is from 1620s.
"Strange Fruit: Banana, Apple, Coconut, and Oreo"
aka
"W.E.B. Du Bois' Double Consciousness"
2014
superflat sculpture: meranti wood and paint
165 x 80 x 45 cm
65 x 31-3/8 x 17-34 in.
Detail Nº 1 (back view):
projection of Fred Gildersleeve's photograph of teenager Jesse Washington
"Calling Card #1 (Adrian Piper)
2014 - 2015
A4 double-sided card stock business cards
8.5 x 5.5 cm
3-3/8 x 2-1/16 in.
framed prints of Rober Gober's "Hanging Man/ Sleeping Man" (1989)
with "Calling Card #1 (Adrian Piper)"
"In Ode to Negro Sunshine"
(Glenn Ligon. 1960; and Gertrude Stein, 1874)
2014
superflat sculpture: meranti wood and paint
87 x 44 x 0.5 cm (each)
34-1/2 x 17-3/8 x 1/16 in.
"AR 670-1: Operation Black Hair"
aka
"The Desert as Adjacency"
2014
superflat sculpture: meranti wood and paint
medium cactus:
170 x 125 x 125 cm
67 x 49 x 49 in.
large cactus:
210 x 115 x 115 cm
82-5/8 x 45-1/4 x 45-1/4 in.
small cactus:
62 x 42 x 42 cm
24-7/8 x 16-1/2 x 16-1/2 in.
Karolin Schnoor
AMERICA has always had trouble with black hair. The United States Army is only the latest in a long line of institutions, corporations and schools to restrict it. On March 31, the Army released an updated appearance and grooming policy, known as AR 670-1. It applies to all Army personnel, including students at West Point and those serving in the R.O.T.C. and the National Guard.
No distinctions are made for race or ethnicity, only gender, in that the regulations regarding hair are divided between women and men. But it’s not hard to infer that certain sections pertain specifically to black women, since they refer to hairstyles like cornrows, braids, twists and dreadlocks, severely limiting or banning them outright.
While the Army certainly isn’t the first to impose these kinds of prohibitions, it may be the most egregious example, considering that the 26,000 black women affected by AR 670-1 are willing to die for their country. On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel ordered the entire military to review its hairstyle rules, after the women of the Congressional Black Caucus sent him a letter saying that the Army policy’s language was “offensive” and “biased” and strongly urging him to reconsider it. More than 17,000 people signed a petition submitted to WhiteHouse.gov asking the Obama administration to review the policy.
The bias against black hair is as old as America itself. In the 18th century, British colonists classified African hair as closer to sheep wool than human hair. Enslaved and free blacks who had less kinky, more European-textured hair and lighter skin — often a result of plantation rape — received better treatment than those with more typically African features.
After Emancipation, straight hair continued to be the required look for access to social and professional opportunities. Most black people internalized the idea that their natural hair was unacceptable, and by the early 20th century wore it in straightened styles often achieved with dangerous chemical processes or hot combs, or they wore wigs.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Black Power movement declared that “black is beautiful” — and not least unstraightened natural black hair. Soon the Afro became a popular style, first at protests and political rallies and eventually on celebrities from Pam Grier to Michael Jackson.
But in many settings, black hair was still a battleground. In the 1980s civil rights groups led boycotts against the Hyatt hotel chain after it terminated a black female employee for wearing cornrows. In 1999, couriers for Federal Express were fired for wearing dreadlocks. And this past fall, 7-year-old Tiana Parker was told her dreadlocks violated her elementary school’s dress code in Tulsa, Okla., and 12-year-old Vanessa VanDyke was threatened with expulsion from her private school in Orlando, Fla., because her natural hair was deemed a “distraction.”
If a person doesn’t have black hair, isn’t married to someone with black hair or isn’t raising a child with black hair, this issue may seem like a whole lot of something about nothing. But what these women are demanding is a policy that reflects a basic understanding of black hair. For most black people, hair naturally grows up and out — think of the shape of an Afro — not down. But the Army’s regulations assume that all hair not only grows the same way but can be styled the same way. For example, one permitted hairstyle is a bun. Yet because of the thickness of a lot of black women’s hair, a bun is not always possible unless the hair is put into twists first. But twists and dreadlocks, no matter how narrow and neat, are banned in the policy and labeled “faddish” and “exaggerated.”
Black people around the globe have worn dreadlocks for centuries. They can be easily and neatly worn under a helmet or in a bun. Two-strand twists, a popular option for black female soldiers that look similar to braids but are much easier to style, especially in the field, are versatile and require little maintenance. AR 670-1 does allow women to wear wigs and hair extensions, a suggestion that borders on the ridiculous when considering the time and cost required for upkeep in a salon — let alone in a desert army barracks.
The argument isn’t that the Army does not have the right to enforce a conservative code — this is the Army, after all — but that it must consider the diversity of hair textures. The current policy is the equivalent of a black majority military telling its thousands of white soldiers that they are required to have dreadlocks or Afros.
At a time when the military is trying to attract more women to its ranks — this week, the military’s newspaper, Stars and Stripes, ran a cover story about West Point’s attempt to draw more female cadets — it can’t afford policies that punish those same women for their ethnic features. Secretary Hagel says the military has three months for its review “to ensure standards are fair and respectful.”
Here’s an idea: Why not take a survey of active and retired black servicewomen? Let the courageous women serving our nation contribute to an understanding of what conservative, safe and professional means when it comes to their own hair.
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Ayana Byrd and Lori L. Tharps are the authors of “Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 1, 2014, on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: When Black Hair Is Against the Rules. Order Reprints
BEAST OF BURDEN SERIES
2014
3 SUPERFLAT SCULPTURES AND CALLING CARDS
"[...] our humanity is our burden, our life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is infinitely more difficult — that is, accept it."
-- James Baldwin,
"Notes of a Native Son - Everybody's Protest Novel."
"Sometimes African Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, there’s been the notion of “acting white” -- which sometimes is overstated, but there’s an element of truth to it, where, okay, if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing that? Or why are you speaking so properly? And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go."
"[...] without vision a people will perish. And what happens when you start losing your language and you start losing your culture and you don’t have a sense of connections to ancestors and those memories that date back generations is you start feeling adrift. And if you’re living in a society that devalues that, then you start maybe devaluing yourself and internalizing some of those doubts."
-- President Barack Hussein Obama II; July 21, 2014
"A quick thought: The consequences of allowing a significant portion of the population to exist as clandestine citizens without rights is tremendous. The problems increase exponentially as their children internalize the external political and economic power structure. Future generations 'accept' the myths of the dominant ethnic/ racial groups that are projected on them. This leads to an obliteration of self-esteem and subsequently common aspirations. Their concept 'We' and 'us' becomes synonymous with poverty, crime, and ultimately shame. This in turn allows the powerful to manipulate them as economic and political demographics. And this, my friends, can take hundreds of years to fix, if in fact it is ever able to be fixed at all."
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