Dear Care & Feeding: Black Kids' Hair

[minoanmiss]

I’m a white woman married to a Black man, and we have a beautiful 9-year-old daughter together. Our family would eat at a local restaurant for breakfast every Saturday morning prior to the pandemic, and now that things are starting to get back to normal, we decided to go back there last weekend for the first time in over a year. My husband couldn’t attend, so it was just me and my daughter. Everything was going fine until a white man who is a regular at this restaurant stopped by our booth and ran his fingers through my daughter’s thick curly hair and mentioned how beautiful it was. My daughter and I were shocked, but we didn’t say anything.

When I came home and told my husband, he was furious. He was so mad that I had to physically restrain him from going to the restaurant to knock the guy out. Is my husband overreacting? I thought the guy crossed the line, but it’s not like his intentions were malicious. We see him at this restaurant often, and he’s a very nice man. I know that it’s not politically correct to touch a Black girl’s hair, but now I’m worried that my husband has anger issues that I’m unaware of. I have never seen him that angry in the 13 years we’ve been together and he’s still angry about the incident today. How can I talk him off the ledge? Please help!

—Hair Despair

Dear Hair Despair,

Let’s say you were out at the same restaurant and you were pregnant. Now imagine the same dude approached you and rubbed your belly without permission. Would you be cool with that? According to your logic, his intentions weren’t malicious or creepy — so why should it matter? Actually, you should just let any random dude with good intentions rub your belly without asking. If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is ridiculous. Strangers shouldn’t be randomly touching anyone — pandemic or not.

The situation with your daughter is way worse because she’s a child, and the fact that you’re dismissing this situation shows that you’re painfully clueless about what it’s like to be a person of color in America. I don’t know your husband personally, but the one thing we have in common is we are both Black men with mixed-race daughters. About four years ago, I was at an aquarium with my girls and a white dude started groping my youngest daughter’s hair. I didn’t get physical with him, but I definitely caused a scene that put my anger in full display of everyone within 50 feet of me. The white man didn’t apologize and thought that I was “overreacting” and being “excessively angry.” Sound familiar?

The reason your husband and I were so upset is due to the dehumanization Black people have endured throughout American history and still endure today. These two white men treated our daughters like zoo animals meant to satisfy their curiosity. In their minds, no permission was needed because our daughters didn’t deserve the dignity of permission. On the flipside, could you imagine what would happen if I was at a restaurant and ran my fingers though the blonde hair of some random white girl? How do you think that would have ended for me?

For my entire life I’ve dealt with white people dehumanizing me overtly or through micro-aggressions. When it happened to my child at the aquarium, I snapped. Your husband snapped, too. Why? Because we love our kids so damn much that we want to do whatever it takes to protect them from the racism we’ve suffered through. A good partner would approach the situation with the same energy, but instead you’re making excuses for a stranger. It’s an awful look.

So, no—your husband doesn’t have a problem with anger, he has a problem with racism. I’m all for your husband being as firm as he needs to be with the guy at the restaurant without being physically violent with him. People like that guy need to understand how incredibly disrespectful it is to do what he did to your child, and apparently you do too.

—Doyin

Comments

[gingicat]

*three snaps up*

[minoanmiss]

I just -- imagine someone walking up and running his hands through E's hair. WE would kill him. As well we should. And then there's that the guy did this to her daughter because she's Black! I do not get this letter writer at ALL.

[minoanmiss]

Dear LW: I'm not sure I trust you with the precious psyches of your daughter and husband.

First of all, let's set race aside for a moment. (And this is me saying this.) Are you telling me that you're ok with some random man coming up to your child and touching her to satisfy his own desire? SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY??

Now let's bring race back into it, where it truly was all along. Unless there's a whole pattern you left out, your leap to "maybe my husband has anger issues" pisses me off on my brother's behalf. Have you actually listened to him talk about being Black in America? Can he talk to you about that? Have you talked to anyone about what it's like to be a Black woman in America? Because that's what your daughter has to be -- for example, that's not the last man who will feel entitled to her body, trust me -- and you need to help her deal with it.

You have some things to learn right away to take proper care of the man who entrusted his heart to you and the child the universe gifted you with. Get to it.

[shirou]

Right on.

First of all, let's set race aside for a moment. (And this is me saying this.) Are you telling me that you're ok with some random man coming up to your child and touching her to satisfy his own desire? SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY??

Of course LW wouldn't normally be okay with such a thing, and it's only because of race that she allows it. How awful for her daughter.

[ayebydan]

Yeah even in my mostly white country if some adult man started running their hands through the hair of a pre-teen's hair in public they would be knocked the f out.

[conuly]

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

DO NOT LET PEOPLE TOUCH YOUR KIDS WITHOUT PERMISSION OR SOME EXTREMELY GOOD REASON! (Such as, eg, grabbing them out of the path of an oncoming bus.)

[watersword]

LW, as a fellow white lady, please please please take a real long hard look at yourself in a mirror. Read some books by Black and mixed-race people, especially Black and mixed-race women (both nonfiction about race and books that are not about BIPOC people's suffering in a white supremacist society). Put some work into learning about what the world does to children like your little girl and to men like your husband, because your ignorance is currently causing them both harm.

[lemonsharks]

I'd say husband is exactly the right amount of reacting and that this is absolutely a situation where the family, especially White Mom, needs to do everything in their (her) power to get the creepo hair-toucher permanently banned from the restaurant.

[azurelunatic]

OH my god WHAT THE FUCK. I'm white and I know this is terrible.

Susannah Dean does not approve of this bullshit

[cereta]

Because of spouse and child's pre-pandemic weekly Friday breakfast at one of two restaurants, there are a lot of people who know my daughter well enough to ask her how school is going, or even how a test was, or even just to exchange a pleasant hello. Consider that background.

If anyone, whether a total stranger or someone we'd seen for years, ran their hand through my kid's hair, there would be words. Very strong words. And my kid is a white kid with blond hair. That's just basic social contract.

But for a girl of color? Oh, HELL no.

[mommy]

I appreciate that the response to this letter moves the focus from "the husband is going to embarrass LW by getting angry in public" to "the husband is right to be angry and here's why." This is a lesson LW should have learned at least ten years ago.

[raine]

OhmiGod, my mom would be horrified at that mother's non-reaction. Where is that mother's instincts about protecting her child from strangers??

[ashbet]

I have had enough fucking trouble as a white-presenting woman with very curly hair that everyone wants to touch and "sproing" (I loathed it as a child and I loathe it now, hair-touching is something reserved for people in my closest circle of intimacy), and that's without the additional taint of anti-Black racism and misogynoir.

Lady, you'd be freaking out and calling the cops if a man insisted on fondling any other part of your daughter's body to, as minoanmiss put it, "satisfy his own desire" -- why are you letting him touch her in a racialized way that feeds into the idea that Black women's hair and bodies are public property??!?

I understand freezing in the moment, but you should have been prepared for this -- and your reaction to your husband's entirely justified anger is INFURIATINGLY wrong.

[mirlacca]

All of this, and then some.

[lilysea]

1. COVID. Do not put your germs all over a child who is too young to have received the COVID vaccine, random stranger! Especially since the child may go to in-person school with a large group of other children too young to have been vaccinated!

2. Men should not touch female children or women without prior consent and female children should be taught early to say NO

3. Some children have PTSD/Autism/Chronic pain etc which makes touching them a VERY bad idea, and this man had no idea if this applied

4. On top of all of the above, touching Black hair comes across as "Black people, specifically, have no right to bodily autonomy!" which is a terrible message full of racism and probably has its roots in slavery.

As a personal note, I am a very pale, white, fat, powerwheelchair user in my 40s with short straight hair, and in preCOVID times I have had strangers on the train/other public spaces reach out and pat my head/ruffle my hair as tho I were a dog. It was very frightening and also felt like they saw me as an animal or an inanimate object rather than fully human. I also had women eg in the supermarket queue ask to touch my hair and then get angry/offended when I politely but firmly said NO. All up the unasked-touching and the asking combined only happened maybe 20 times but it was enough to make me feel unsafe dyeing my hair eg blue/teal/purple and I reverted to my natural unflattering hair colour. I can only imagine the level of fear and rage it causes in Black children/women for whom it is a regular experience.

[lilysea]

p.s. Also, I live in a non-US country in an area with VERY few Black women of African ancestry with natural curly hair - the few Black women who live in my area mainly have straightened hair, braids/plaits, or wear hijab/other religious hair coverings.

and nonetheless I learned many many years ago from books, short stories, and the internet that it is NEVER okay to touch a Black woman's hair without asking

and that even ASKING to touch a Black woman's hair is an aggression unless you are very close friends/dating

This man, who it sounds like is living in the US? He has NO excuse for being ignorant of this, which means it was an act of malicious indifference...