Can I Touch Your Hair?

A black woman’s hair is often seen as a representation of who she is. If she adorns a weave she is seen as being superficial and vain. Being a westernised version of herself. If she has an afro or dreadlocks she is perceived as “woke” and embracing of Africanism. If she wears a head wrap or more colloquially known as a doek, she is seen as submissive and pious. Or, as I have heard when I wear a head wrap, “Is it a bad hair day?” A black woman’s hair is racial politics.

The politics of black hair start from an early age. As Cheryl Thompson says in her article about black women’s hair, “For young black girls, hair is not just something to play with, it is something that is laden with messages, and it has the power to dictate how others treat you, and, in turn, how you feel about yourself. Hair in its style, could lead to acceptance or rejection from certain groups and social classes.” Hair is a complex issue for all women no matter their race. Blonde is better than dark hair; long hair is better than short hair; straight hair is better than curly hair and so on. For black women however, there is an additional layer of racialisation and misogyny in terms of the fetishizing of hair. Our colonial history tells us that straight hair is acceptable and perhaps more lovable. It makes a black woman appear relaxed and agreeable. While an afro makes people feel uneasy, as it represents a woman who is angry and militant.

During the Apartheid years, hair was preeminent in determining one’s race. Skin colour alone did not suffice in making an accurate pronouncement about a person’s race. The texture of one’s hair decided if they were black, coloured or Asian. The texture of the hair was assessed by what was called the pencil test. A pencil would be inserted into the person’s hair and if the pencil fell out, they were classified as coloured and if it did not fall out they were classified as black. As we know, if one was classified as black, they fell into the lowest social ranking and were allowed oppressive, limited rights. “Besides being a form of structural violence,” as Toks Oyedemi states in the paper titled Beauty as Violence, “this historical act led to psychological and cultural violence. The culture of passing as White or Coloured involved, amongst many acts, mechanically and chemically straightening one’s hair to erase one’s natural identity.”

Straightening the hair was a way of gaining some form of advantage in the world (Thompson,

2009). As Thompson says, “Straight hair has one less battle to fight and allows for [opportunities].”

I came to the realisation of the politics of my black hair when I was in high school. Leading up to our Matric class picture, Mrs Steyn asked me to fix my hair for the picture. “As the headgirl of the school, you have to look neat,” she said. I had a short afro and I was unclear what she meant by it looking neat. Moreover, I did not know how to “fix it”. Because at the time I did not have an uncompliant bone in my body, I politely said to Mrs Steyn, “I will get my hair done ma’am. Don’t worry I will not disappoint you.” In hindsight, I noticed how I was able to be shamed through my hair. I could be tamed, controlled and expected to obey, through the use of my hair. I am consciously inserting that I was Head-girl, as it was a huge achievement for a young adolescent girl to be promoted to head prefect. And yet despite being “top” girl, I was somehow an embarrassment to my Afrikaans teacher. The racism was subliminal both for me, internally identifying with the teacher and for the teacher, externally projecting her ambivalence and need to own me. Neither was able to see what was being “done.”

I am now always conscious of the unconscious communication of my hair, particularly in my clinical work. My hairstyle speaks volumes before I have even had the opportunity to speak.

A private patient, who had an afro, sharing a story of her ex-husband’s infidelity, said that the infidelity was confirmed by the weave strands she found in their bed. She knew very well that the hair was not hers, because she does not like fake hair. “Obviously, he would go for the young, high maintenance woman,” was my patient’s final remark before moving on from the subject. I became starkly aware of the weave on my head as my patient was talking. Am I also the young, high maintenance woman? What did my patient think of my hair as she spoke about the weave? In another session, the same patient, pointed to my weave while trying to describe another woman’s appearance. Her disdain for the weave was very clear. At that moment I became ashamed to name the mane on my head. It was as if her afro was passing judgment on my weave. Because of my weave, I became the other woman. At that moment I did not think of the possible envy my patient had of my youth and beauty, which may have been located in my weave. As if to say my beauty was positioned in my proximity to whiteness. The normal dynamic between patient and therapist became perverted. I could not simply think about her anxieties about me, my youth, my beauty, my fertility, and so forth. I was forced to also look at the racialisation.

To people outside of the black community, black hair seems like a great deal of fun, because of the many styling options available to black women (Thompson, 2009). I am often surprised and at times annoyed by my white colleagues’ fascination with my hair. My white male supervisor would occasionally comment on my hairstyles. Amazed that I could change my hair fortnightly. He called it the changing styles of Ntshedi. Another senior white colleague commented that I had changed my hair again, when I arrived for a monthly reading group one evening. I wondered about this fascination and had a discussion with my supervisor about it. He understood the preoccupation as some form of envy. For a white woman to change her hair, she would have to do something drastic, like cut it or colour it, while a black woman can change her hair without losing her natural hair. In having this conversation, my supervisor and I could understand something of each other. And I could also explain that I have lost more than just hair in the constant manipulation of my hair to make it look straighter. I also lost my identity.

I saw a 12-year-old Indian boy for two years in therapy at the community clinics, which means he saw countless changing styles of Ntshedi. There were many differences between us: age, race, religion, language and the textures of our hair. We, however, managed to connect by reaching for each other through the crevices of our differences. We took it upon ourselves to teach each other about one another. The education started with the simple gesture of learning how to say each other’s names. He taught me where to place the accent on his name. When that failed, he slowly mouthed his name to me. We did this exercise until I finally got it right. And even after getting it right, we had to do the exercise again in a few weeks’ time, when my tongue slipped back to the incorrect way of saying his name. He was patient with me. More importantly, he did not give up on me. He, however, struggled with my name until the day we terminated. The “tshe” in Ntshediseng was very difficult for him. He called me Nthediseng. His grandmother called me “psychologist”. Interestingly, I did not hold this against him. I would always correct him every time he said my name and not feel frustrated that he would get it wrong. I did with him, what I do with everyone, white and black, expect them to say my name incorrectly.

When my patient’s father died, he took it upon himself to teach me about Islam. To help me understand how Muslims bury their dead. He helped me name Muslim objects that were familiar but nameless to me. He also taught me about being a prepubescent boy in 2016. The Marvel world versus the DC world. Movies that are a “must-see”. “You cannot die without watching Deadpool!” I was told. I felt the need to teach him about me, when I realised his attempts to connect with me. In one session he told me that he had learned a few Sotho words. Excited, he told me the curse words he had learned and asked that I explain their meaning. I recognised his efforts and did the therapist-thing by asking what he thought the words meant. I went on to augment his budding Sotho vocabulary with a few simple words that were less vulgar.

My hair intrigued him as well. My weave did not excite him, as much as the afro and braids did. At the beginning of 2017, he came to a session and found that I had cut my hair. He was shocked by this. He was used to the weaves and braids, and it is very possible that he had never seen my hair in its natural state. He asked a number of questions about my hair, until I asked him if he wanted to feel it. He nodded excitedly. He was the first Indian person to touch my hair. In learning about each other, my little patient and I managed to reach across the divide, as is the title of Yael Kadish’s paper, and find a way to connect.

It often feels as though it is easier to reach across the divide with children rather than adults.

Children appear to be more accepting of vulnerabilities than adults are. I saw an older white Afrikaner man for therapy during my community service year. We had a good therapeutic relationship, but we never spoke about the stark differences between us. He once said to me that I reminded him of the maid he had when he was growing up. The maid, like me, was nurturing and warm. He called the maid mama and I cannot remember if he actually asked to call me by the same name or if he, in fact, did call me mama. I just remember being uncomfortable with the name, because it felt derogatory. Although it was not intended to be derogatory, there was something about the historical context of that name that did not sit well with me. It made me feel as though maids and gardeners were his only frame of reference in relation to black people. I did not mention my discomfort to him, however. Being a novice psychologist at that time, who was eager to please and trying very hard not to do any harm, I did not create the space for that patient and me to talk about what divided us. I imagine that had we talked about our differences, he would have had a deeper understanding of his subjectivity in relation to a black person. Perhaps it may have been frightening to have a black therapist who is not a maid, nor safe and reliable, but somebody he has to take a chance with - to truly trust. Trust – in its truest sense always has fear in it, because of the knowledge of being let down. And the beauty of real trust is the silent contract that we will not let each other down. By evading the fear of trusting me, a black woman, my patient did not allow himself to receive my gift of trust as therapist to him. He simply took it from his "maid". As a result, we were both cheated.

I have not had many opportunities to work with white patients since my community service year. Writing this paper has made me question if this was a deliberate decision on my part. Was I trying to avoid white people? Did I fear being called mama again? When a white patient comes into my consulting room, which rarely happens, I feel the need to be a better therapist. I make sure that my English is perfect and that I am dressed well. I worry that my name is too long, so I tell them to call me Ntshedi instead. It is incredible how I always find ways to accommodate whiteness. Be it in the coconut accent, the straightening of the hair, the subduing of anger and the attempts to not disappoint Mrs Steyn. I suppose that is part of the reason I did not want to work in the northern suburbs: I did not want to accommodate whiteness any more than I have. I did not want my hair to be under further scrutiny.

Talking about anger, it upsets me that the majority of my colleagues do not speak any “black languages”, which results in me and my other black colleague carrying the load of patients who cannot speak English at the community clinics. My frustration at these referrals has largely gone unprocessed. I, therefore, engage in a violent act of avoidance in relation to these referrals that sit unorganised at the top of my clinic file. I roughly page over them, quickly trying to get to the “more important” patients. I cringe when I see referrals that say, “Needs a Sotho or Zulu speaking therapist,” for I know that means me. This made me think back to a time in University when my fellow white psychology students were taking up subjects like French and Spanish, and not complaining that these languages were too difficult to learn. The question then becomes, when does the black way of being become easily understood and widely accepted? When does my hair stop being a fascination and become the norm?

I feel inferior as a black psychologist, especially when supervising interns. I sometimes speak Sotho in supervision with black interns and it leaves me questioning if I am offering them mediocre supervision as compared to my white counterparts. Once, when I supervised a white intern, I felt insecure as if I was giving them sub-par supervision. In one supervision session, I vehemently disagreed with how the white intern said a black patient’s name and asked that they say it right. I was terribly unfair to the intern. Because I felt insecure, I made myself feel better by pressing on an issue that I knew I would get right and they would get wrong. Granted, feelings of insecurities are common with novice supervisors, but I think there is an added layer of inferiority when blackness is involved. It is already hard enough to feel sufficiently competent as a psychologist of any race, and it is all that much harder when you are a black psychologist, because we already come with historical insecurities. I, therefore, projected into the intern the shame and helplessness that I felt has been systematically projected into me. For the black supervisor to own authority comes at the expense of having to work through internalised racism.

At the Deadly Medicine Conference two weeks ago, Yassmin Carrim said and I am paraphrasing, there is a lot of pressure placed on young black professionals and this is a problem. That statement deeply resonated with me. As the second generation black female to attend university in my family, there is much that is expected of me. Along with that, I cannot afford to fail as a young black professional. If I fail, then I am proving to white people that black people cannot do the job. Furthermore, if I fail, I am letting down the black nation. My success means that the black child can believe that it is possible. My failure further limits their options. The pressure feels unbearable.

At times I wish that I could have the invisibility that whiteness affords. To be able to walk into a white room and not be counted as one of the few. To be selected for a Masters programme and not question if I was a transformation candidate. To be able to get employment without worrying that I was a diversity hire. To not be scared to make mistakes. To not be labelled a good black psychologist, but just a good psychologist.

In writing this paper, I realised how actively I carry my racial identity in every aspect of my work – with patients, with colleagues, in my professional involvements. I realise how it shapes the ways in which I engage; at times opening up, and at other times closing down on the space. I recognise too the impact of my patients’ identity, and how they carry that as an essential part of who they are, where they come from and what they bring. And how, together, we co-construct a space which is, in part, shaped by our respective racial identities.

Ntshediseng Tlooko is a Clinical Psychologist at the Johannesburg Metro District Clinics. She also runs a Private Practice. She is currently about to begin her Training in Psychoanalysis with SAPA.