Natural Hair and the Cultural Violence of Identity Erasure
A Talk by Karla Brundage MFA , Micah A. Bledsoe-Holland , Margalynne Armstrong JD and RachelSimone Wyley
About this Talk
Natural hair figures prominently in the politics of visibility, inclusion, and exclusion within Black anti-racist aesthetics. A legacy of slavery has yielded racially motivated beauty standards that work against Black and Afro-Latina females. How does the physical and cultural violence perpetuated in the quest for “beautiful” hair consequently foment a generational cycle of identity erasure? How do we teach White society that there can never be a definitive reading of Black beauty?