#everywhere stop

I thought about starting this blog after watching the movie (which by the way I recommand to everybody!) : “Dear White People”.  The movie tells the story of an escalating racial tensions at a fictitious, prestigious Ivy League college from the perspective of several African American students. Among them is Samantha White a media arts major who’s hosting a radio show called “Dear White People” in which she is criticizing white people and the racist transgressions at the Ivy League college.

 While watching this movie, something interesting happened to me that made me realise how, from the United States to Europe black people encounter similar experiences with white folks. I was sitting on the couch in the common room of my international residency when my french and japanese friends passed by behind me. The french friend stopped without me noticing and was about to touch my hair when my thai friend told me to stop his move. I turned back and told him “don’t fucking touch it ! Am I a pet to you ?”. He just laughed, saying he didn’t touch it but was only “pretending he was going to”. He laughed again, without taking in consideration how pissed I was.

Some people might think : “why is she getting so angry at such a childish thing ?”, “what’s wrong with a friend touching your hair?”. To those people I’ll answer this : have my hair for one day.

See the picture above ? My hair are very similar. I always tied them in a bun shape on the top of my head. And here the routine starts. Everyday, someone wants to touch my hair. Friends, people I barely know or just met, adults, old people, children, teenagers, girls, boys... Everybody ! They’d stare first, and then either ask me if they can touch it or would try without even asking. What people notice first when they meet me is either my height (1.50 meters) or my hair. People are litteraly obsessed with my hair (or should I say with black people’s hair?). And even if I keep saying “no”, “don’t touch it”, “stop”, most of them would just ignore me and try. My friends (mostly white), after years and years of saying “NO”, keep trying, keep asking. Even if I make myself clear by telling them that I never ask them a thousand time if I can touch their hair so they would understand how stupid that is, keep trying. And when I tell them that they often reply “yes but your hair are funny/special/look soft” etc. As if that was enough to justify their request. I am not a pet. My hair are part of my body like my chest, my face, my legs, my arms.

Dear White people, what if I come to you and ask to touch your chest, your genitals because : “it looks soft/funny/special”, because “I never saw this kind of thing before” ? Don’t tell me that those parts are more “important” than my hair. It is the same. You are not an object that I can touch as I wish. My hair are a part of me as important as any other. And it is rude of you to keep asking to touch it when you know someone hates it, or touch it without asking. It is rude and not respectuous. 

So remember :

BLACK PEOPLE ARE NOT OBJECTS. NEITHER ANIMALS YOU CAN PET.