Loading...
Welcome to Anarcho-Punk.net community ! Please register or login to participate in the forums.   Ⓐ//Ⓔ

Dreads: Cultural Appropriation?

Discussion in 'General political debates' started by RXIl, Dec 16, 2017.

  1. RXIl

    RXIl New Member New Member


    3

    2

    0

    Dec 15, 2017
    Male
    California, United States  United States
    I was thinking of getting dreads, but every one's saying that it's offensive because I'm not black? I'm not mocking anybody... I just want them because I'm tired of fucking combing my hair.
    If anyone can explain this whole concept or whatever to me, I'd appreciate it.
     

  2. ungovernable

    ungovernable Autonome Staff Member Uploader Admin Team Experienced member


    4,422

    117

    24

    Aug 21, 2009
    Male
    Canada  Canada
    This whole Identity Politics thing is getting out of hand. The Haircut Police also accused punks with mohawks of cultural appropriation against indigenous people. If it was so much of a big deal why didn't this debate come out before today? Punks have been having mohawks since 1977, and dreads since even longer. But people are only upset against it now, wtf? After the debate about cultural appropriation, radicals wanted to ban anarchists with dreads from entering the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair around 3 years ago. They even hanged flyers next to the public seats stating "NO WHITE DREADS ALLOWED". I truly understand the importance of the cultural appropriation problem in the society in general, but those marginalizing people already over-marginalized by the society is fucking stupid. Get dreads if you want them, but be ready to deal with Identity Politics thugs once in a while.
     
  3. LIVE_FREE

    LIVE_FREE Active Member Forum Member


    31

    6

    0

    Jan 1, 2018
    Male
    Ontario, Canada  Canada
    Those people are closed minded idiots. Tell them to fuck off and wear your hair how you want. I have dreads in the back of my mohawk because of my pillow. Is my pillow racist?
     
    363, ungovernable and Pats like this.
  4. LIVE_FREE

    LIVE_FREE Active Member Forum Member


    31

    6

    0

    Jan 1, 2018
    Male
    Ontario, Canada  Canada
    How racist is that right? "NO WHITE DREADS ALLOWED". Is it around the corner from the blacks only water fountain? These PC SJW retards make me sick. Im native i would NEVER bitch a someone for sporting a hawk. Simple as that.
     
    ungovernable likes this.
  5. elahrairah

    elahrairah Member Forum Member


    24

    11

    0

    Dec 18, 2017
    Female
    Turkey  Cyprus
    keeping alive someone's values.. i think its not bad at all
     
  6. anarchowitch

    anarchowitch Member Forum Member


    10

    1

    0

    Jan 15, 2018
    Female
    Missouri, United States  United States
    I guess my only argument against dreads isn't a political one or about identity politics. But as someone that's done dreads on someone else's head I can tell you that it destroys the hair when done on white hair. White hair doesn't dread as it can't make the proper curl pattern so instead it gets matted not unlike the hairs by a dog's belly. All you can do with it if you want to get rid of them is cut them out. All the back combing destroys the cuticle layer of the hair which is what keeps the nutrients in. Speaking as a stylist of 4 years btw.
     
    detached805 likes this.
  7. 363

    363 Active Member Forum Member


    32

    4

    0

    Aug 23, 2014
    Male
     United States
    As I've read years ago, the significance of the hairstyle had to do with Rastafari making an outward commitment of their religious devotion, something that could not be undone without cutting the hair.

    Many religious traditions adopt the hairstyle including Sadhus of India and sects of Tibetan Buddhism.

    The earliest historical reference to dreadlocks comes from ancient Greece. Another comes from a Cree chief.

    Hippies wore them. Punks wear them.

    Who are the victims being hurt by this? Must one prove ancestry when questioned to avoid the charge of cultural appropriation?
     
  8. ScottO

    ScottO Member Forum Member


    16

    11

    0

    Jan 6, 2018
    Louisiana, United States  United States
    Lately I've been using Arabic numerals a lot. I mean "MMXVIII" just doesn't seem as cool as "2018." But is it cultural appropriation?
     
  9. anarchowitch

    anarchowitch Member Forum Member


    10

    1

    0

    Jan 15, 2018
    Female
    Missouri, United States  United States
    Considering they're already called "roman numerals" they've already been appropriated. So is it appropriation to appropriate something that has already been appropriated?
     
  10. Micki

    Micki New Member New Member


    4

    1

    0

    Jun 15, 2018
    Female
    New York, United States  United States
    Claiming dreads are cultural appropriation is nonsense. No one culture invented them. The current revival of them did start in Jamaica in the 1950's, but they did not invent them. Pretty much every race/culture has had them at one time as they are a natural occurrence for ALL hair types when its not combed.
     
  11. Red Menace

    Red Menace Active Member Forum Member


    32

    7

    0

    Jun 3, 2018
    Florida, United States  United States
    I have really straight hair. Last year's hurricane season left me without access to running water for days so I was using the water I had for absolute necessities only, washing my hands and not much else. Within just a couple of days my hair started dreading up from not washing, not combing, and all the humidity. Totally natural, as stated above. It's probably a safe guess that in the distant past a large percentage of humans everywhere had something approaching dreads.
     
    Spasmolytic likes this.
  12. punkmar77

    punkmar77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


    5,737

    203

    718

    Nov 13, 2009
     United States
    While of course I agree that dreads are a natural occurance in all cultures, lets also not pretend that there isn't some level of cultural appropriation when trust fund babies run around trying to "find themeselves" by mimicking rasta culture, I tend to agree with most of black folks sentiment in that respect.
     
    NihilVeritasEst likes this.
  13. One2Three4

    One2Three4 New Member New Member

    Hmm... are this particular hairstyles unique to one single race or culture? Let's check out!

    "Dreads"


    Dreads were known in a lot of cultures around the globe since at least stone age - take a look at archeological evidence such as sculptures of females from that age. Example = Venus of Brassempouy. She's about 25,000 years old and was discovered in France in 1892. There are also other examples.

    "Mohawks"

    Are not unique to American Indigenous People only. Most Slavic Eastern Europe were sporting different variants of them (Different hair length, width and length of the back head part) since at least XVI century (there is also a mention from Kyivian Rus time chronicle that one of rulers also had undercut or sidecut with long hair, so that tradition might be even older) - in some cases even the way most iconic for modern punks. Most notorious for wearing them were Ukrainian Cossacks. Also Turkic tribes had their variants. Also famous Otzi "Iceman" had this style of haircut with traces of oils and sap used for stylization. Also there is at least one depiction of Scythian warrior riding the horse with what looks like a standng up mohawk. So evidence of this hairstyle being a part of European Caucasian people's culture from at least Ice Age is pretty solid. It was pretty common hairstyle practice for warrior class of different times and cultures which valued long hair for some religious or esoteric reasons to make a compromise due to practical reasons and shave sides of the head keeping top longer.
     
    ungovernable likes this.
  14. Charger Bullet

    Charger Bullet Experienced Member Experienced member


    55

    27

    0

    Feb 9, 2018
    Male
    Texas, United States  United States
    I'm guessing this is mostly a millennial issue. Up until a few short years ago I didn't even know what the term "culture appropriation" was. I remember seeing a video about some girl in a college arguing with some white guy in a stairwell about something wherein she finally says something along the lines about his hair copying her culture.

    That's pretty much what it amounts to. People that are assholes towards another group but still want to take part in some of that group's culture. It is like when some right-wing clown is spouting his bullshit online but purports to listen to Punk bands that are anti-war and anti-racist. You'd like to respond that fascists shouldn't be listening to that type of music, but the reality is people are going to listen to whatever they want.

    Millennial new-age hippies aren't content to just stop there but to lay the rules to everyone about "culture appropriation" even if they aren't being assholes about that culture's identity. It's pathetic really, when people online turn into the equivalent of an angry mob over some high school kid that wears a Japanese dress to a dance, or when some celebrity photographs themselves wearing an Indian headdress. There are claims that it trivializes parts of others' culture but small, insignificant occurrences don't really do that.

    That's not to say it hasn't happened in the past, though. The real "culture appropriation" was the copying of swing, jazz, blues, rock, disco, techno, etc. from blacks by whites through racist institutions and society. Those days are pretty much over, though. (That's probably one reason why hip-hop has endured for so many years instead of its creators moving on to a new form of music.) I know that people from different races are welcome to join other's culture if they are cool about it and aren't looking to subjugate it. We see that in the hip-hop community, or the graffiti art community, or the low-rider community, or the import tuner car community, or anything else. Yeah, I know those examples aren't the culture the hippies are referring to but the sentiment is the same.
     
    punkmar77 likes this.
Loading...