AJ's Headspace

so-treu:

healingsakina:

darlenecomics:

healingsakina:

iamthechange:

blessedwildapplegirl:

and how far back would you like me to go??????????????????

Dreadlocks are associated most closely with the Rastafari movement, but people from many groups in history before them have worn dreadlocks, including the Hindu Shiva worshippers of India, European Celts (particularly the Druids), the Maasai of East Africa, and the Sufis of Pakistan.so-treu:

healingsakina:

fuckyeahdreadlocks:

:)

i actually have mixed feelings about (seemingly)white folks with dreads. but this is a fantastic photo in every way!

ETA: not too comfortable with her tattoo either, but it’s an awesome design.

Ah! get out of my head! i was just sitting here trying not to get too pissed at the fact that the fuckyeahdreadlocks tumblr is made up of like, 90% white people. on one hand, i recognize it’s a hairstyle, and that there are just as many black folk with locks who are ignorant about things that you’d hope someone wearing locks wouldn’t be ignorant about. buuuuuuuuut still.

 blessedwildapplegirl - first off, all but one of those groups you mentioned are NON-ANGLO. so what exactly is your point? second, no one here said that “only” Rastas can or should wear dreads. what was said, and i will repeat, is that they shouldn’t be worn by whites in ignorance as a “i’m so cool” fashion statement. i realize that you wear them in a connection to your Celtic heritage and i got no beef with you. what i do got beef with is a whole Tumblr that is dedicated to dreadlocks and features predominantly white-hipster-looking kids and zero education (and frequently just plain ignant things being said) about the history and meanings of the style. or even any discussion of how people have DIED (and right now, there is a man in solitary confinement in a U.S. prison for refusing to cut his) over the centuries because they keep this style, but a bunch of silly white kids take it on completely devoid of any recognition of the PRIVILEGE they are exhibiting as they pretend to thumb their noses at convention for a moment before going on with their nice little suburban lives. for you to completely ignore the massive amount of free-taking of cultures not-their-own that so many white people do is problemmatic. for you to come lecturing a bunch of women of color for daring to say that we see a certain objectification and exotification of other cultures is also problemmatic. for you to, apparently, assume that we are the ignorant ones who need to be schooled is just arrogant jerkiness.

meh. it’s just another picture of a white girl that we’re all supposed to admire. we here on tumblr have found every single way imaginable to admire white girls. soft white girls, fat white girls, dreadlocked white girls, naked white girls, bicycling white girls, hairy white girls, clean white girls, white girls in shower, white girls catching butterflies, white girls cooking, white girls cooking naked, white girls with babies, white girls with kittehs, white girls with tats, white girls in catholic school girl dresses, white girls with hippy clothes….what fucking other ways in heavens green earth and jesus can we find to admire white girls? 

 you forgot the half-nekkid white girls in Native headdresses

yeah, i’m sick of the white girl love to begin with and that’s why i follow mostly conscious poc. and yet i still see a whole lot of “admire my hotness” white girl shit. and a whole lot of it involves white girls appropriating ish and acting innocent while doing it.

i don’t think it’s cute or sexy.

exactly. and, healingsakina, i dont know if you saw her initial reply to our convo (she’s deleted them in this reply, although it seems like she hasn’t gotten the hang of replying yet, as opposed to a willful deleting, but i could be wrong). basically, she was like, the hair police need to get a life, and i replied that she needs to get some historical context, and she replied with this. and this is the thing: there is a difference between HISTORY and HISTORICAL CONTEXT. the HISTORY? is everything that you said, blessedwildapplegirl. the HISTORICAL CONTEXT? is everything healingsakina just said. and context is everything. 

but since you’ve (blessedwild) asked…….i’d like you to go back to when Jamaica was a british colony, and Rastas were jailed for refusing to submit to british authority. i want you to go back to when christian missionaries forced hindus to convert to christianity, when India was a british colony as well, because “Neither truth, nor honesty, honour, gratitude, nor charity, is to be found in the breast of a Hindoo!” i want you to go back to when europeans attempted to convert the Maasai, and when that didn’t work, gave them smallpox and took their land. and until you and your white fakelock rocking companions address this in your precious tumblr, you can kindly piss off. there are places i can’t get a job because i wear my hair like this - there are places that would fire me for wearing my hair in its natural state, period. so you putting honey and backcombing and rubber-banding it or whatever you have to do to get it to do what my hair does *naturally*, does not impress me.

And with that….church is dismissed.