Design by Ley
la Dumke
What are some hair vices you are aware
of or find yourself apprehended by?
“I’ll be jealous of my friend with box
braids or dreads,” Boothe said. “I just
know myself, and that I’ll never get to
that amount. I wish it was just like GTA
where I could just switch on the hair.”
N
I
L
E
S
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL
What is the relationship between your
hair and spirituality? Do you have any
thoughts on the connection between Black
hair and Spirit in general?
She likened Black hair to halos, positing
that “Black hair naturally defies gravity, it
elevates us as people when we wear it natu-
rally. We are literally being lifted up from
the crowns of our heads to the Heavens to
God. It’s an expulsion of love and beauty.”
N
O
V
A
M I A M I , F L O R I D A
What is healthy (Black) hair care?
Why should we, or should we care
about our hair?
“Whatever routine works for you and
makes you feel and look good. We should
care about (our hair) more and emphasize
that not everybody’s path is the same. I
think it’s important to create an under-
standing of Black hair in that it can be way
more individualized.”
V I C T O R I A
DETROIT,
MICHIGAN
What is the relationship between your
hair and spirituality? Or do you have
any thoughts on the connection between
Black hair and Spirit in general?
“There’s this idea that the curl pattern of
Black hair is on a higher frequency in the
energy because of the spiral shape and it
acts as an antenna in a way,” Clark said. “I
think that it really helps us connect with
our spirituality in that sense.
Black
Hair
Series
THE
Michigan in Color
6 — Wednesday, February 15, 2023
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
G
alaxies
swirl.
Atoms
spin. All things in the
cosmos operate in spiri-
tual motion — a spiral
movement, that is. A
curl, if you will. Eyebrows raise at
the sight of these natural affairs. The
terrifying force of a tornado. The oth-
erworldly twirl of a whirlpool. The
coarse and kinky, nappiest strands
of negrohood. What was once seen as
the good, the great, godly textures of
ancient eras long gone, has now been
rendered second-rate, second-hand,
undesirably bland … that is the undu-
lating nature of Black hair. As Black
authors Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L.
Tharps harrowingly declare in their
collective “Hair Story,” “When you
believe you’re inferior you’re much
easier to control.”
The mechanisms of mass program-
ming, white supremacist propaganda
and the ideological imperatives of
industrial capitalism have histori-
cally worked overtime to put forth
these fabrications. It is no mystery
that Black hair, for hundreds of years,
has been as brutalized as Black peo-
ple. Hardly trimming away at our own
treacherous mis-education, we stay
stuck, entangled in despair, in decep-
tion, so entrenched by the detriments
of a spiritually/spirally deficient soci-
ety, divorced from the realization that
our hair in its most fine, most natural
state is divine. As Black author SuZar
puts it, “hair is the receiver and trans-
mitter of divine emanation it makes
you receptive to spiritual forces.”
Our hair — the highest part of the
body — is holy, speaking wholly to
our soul, the universe and dimensions
beyond. The stories of old, of Samson,
of Medusa, those told by the Rasta-
farians and the Afrikans of the Nile,
could not deny the numinous nature of
the nappy. As Numbers 6:5 utters, “he
shall be holy, and shall let the locks of
the hair of his head grow.” We know,
now, the evolutionary basis for tight
curls, as author Bill Bryson describes
in “The Body,” “being the most effi-
cient kind because it increases the
thickness of the space between the
surface of the hair and scalp allowing
the air to blow.” Though the earliest of
peoples were right to think that these
kinks and curls unfurl into something
greater than mere a biological buf-
fer. Our hair is an antenna. Its spiral
energies, swirling at great speeds,
indeed, acts as a magnetic mechanism
for spiritual ascension. And the culti-
vation of these coarse spirals surely
grants one growth in their spiritual
facilities.
How else would a people enslaved,
abused and brutalized, tortured and
tormented, mistreated and beaten
find the means to see and be beyond
material circumstances? The collec-
tive spirit of Blackness is one that
defies such impossible odds. This is
a spirit that moves towards harmony,
remains rich in rhythm and valiant
in verve, unmoved by the matrices of
mass control, the white power struc-
ture and Western hegemony. And
nowhere better is this extraordinary
persistence exemplified than in the
hallowed hairs of Black people.
Fade in on The Black Hair Series.
Hello! It’s time to dutifully de-condi-
tion. Moisturize our soul. Reclaim the
harmed parts of ourselves that, once
healed, make us whole.
Read the rest of the interviews at
mic.michigandaily.com/black-hair-series.
K
A
R
I
S
KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN
B
y Akash Dewan, Udoka N
wansi and Karis Clar
k