Introducing Black Hair Defined

In the United States of America, Black hair is so often seen through a white lens.

Several highly publicized incidents over the past few years have shown the extent of the problem: There was Andrew Johnson, the high school wrestler forced to cut his locs before competing in a match; there was Sally Hazelgrove, a white woman running a nonprofit organization for at-risk youth who celebrated cutting young men’s locs for a “better life”; there have been innumerable cases of Black people — Black women, mostly — whose hairstyles were rebuked in the workplace.

In incidents like these, the bigotry is twofold. There is the bigotry of discrimination: not being allowed to work somewhere, model in a certain fashion show or anchor a specific news broadcast because of one’s hair. (It’s a problem so systemic that three states — New York, New Jersey and California — all issued bans outlawing discrimination against Black hair in workplaces, at schools and in public spaces.) But then there is also the bigotry of having to seek approval in the first place. Black hair deserves to be defined by more than its fiercest critics.

With that in mind, we created Black Hair Defined, a project intended to amplify Black discussions about Black hair.

Black hair is an artistic form of expression, sometimes conveying what Black people wish to share about ourselves — neatness, messiness, nakedness, cultural pride, personal independence and all sorts of other feelings. And the time we spend treating our hair and heads — combing, coiffing and massaging them to our liking ― is an expression of the care and sensitivity we feel we deserve.

In “Hair Love,” the animated, Oscar-nominated short film about a Black father discovering how to style his daughter’s hair, filmmaker Matthew Cherry depicts the hair care experience as tender and intimate. In the film, we see a father, Stephen, and his daughter, Zuri, bonding over Zuri’s love for her locks. It is Zuri’s exuberant self-love that ultimately convinces her father her hair is not to be feared…

Hair Love is a 2019 American animated short film written and directed by Matthew A. Cherry and co-produced with Karen Rupert Toliver. It follows the story of a man who must do his daughter’s hair for the first time.

Full article here

Oscar-winning Hair Love here 

The CROWN Act info here