On March 29, 2016, a white man was verbally attacked by a black woman because he had dreads. The woman claimed that he shouldn’t have dreads because it was her culture and she didn’t appreciate him having that hairstyle. She believed that it was an insult to her culture. When she asked him if he knew what culture they originated from, he did and answered her very confidently, yet the woman kept bothering him about it.

Was she wrong for attacking him for his choice of hairstyle?

There are many different responses to this video. Some people believe that he shouldn’t have dreads and some people believe that she had no right to tell him what type of hairstyle he should have. A sophomore at Bob Jones High School, who wished to be anonymous, said, “In the grand scheme of things, he can do whatever he wants. Yes, it’s reasonable to slightly find it offensive, but we should be used to it as a race. She doesn’t even have the right to claim it as her culture.”

The woman was wrong for attacking him the way she did. She had no right in telling him what’s okay for him to wear on is head.

She addressed him from a cultural standpoint, but who really knows the cultural foundation of the dread lock? The Dreadlock did not originate in Egypt but in India. They were Holy men who had nothing, not even a comb to comb out their hair, which led to the dreadlock, who were enslaved and escaped to the Caribbean or Jamaican. The Hindu holy men and the Rastafarians wore their dreads as religious lifestyle. It was more religious to the Rastafarians than the Hindu holy men. They considered their hair to be holy and powerful.

Many people nowadays just look at dreads as a cute hairstyle, when back in the day it was a way of life. 

Many African Americans get really offended at the sight of caucasian people with dreads. They feel, much like that woman, that it’s an insult to the black culture. Even when googling dreadlocks, the majority of the pictures you will see are caucasian people. This leads straight into cultural appropriation. Cultural Appropriation is the adoption or use of one culture from members of another culture. Back when Zendaya, the Disney star, wore dreads people wrote comments like “Her hair probably smells like oils and weed,” but Justin Bieber can get dreads and the media shows so much love for them. That’s not even his culture but it was Zendaya’s and she got a lot of hate. This also goes along with Box Braids and Cornrows. Michael Holmes said, “Black people believe that we have certain things that we believe is considered ‘ours’ and nobody that isn’t black should take that.” The problem with that is, it’s honestly just a hairstyle.

In society today, Caucasians aren’t the only ones who adopt other people’s culture. Black people do it, too. We all do it. We take what we like and wear it how we like. We need to stop this whole thing is mine and you can’t have it.

Instead of keeping everything separated we should be uniting and sharing our cultures. Like one big melting pot, we should be blending our cultures instead of segregating them. Society is kind of stuck in the past and where things originated from. That is important, but it’s not that deep.

As long as you understand and know where your hairstyle is from and you respect that, then you can rock any hairstyle you want to.