I used to let white ppl touch my hair (8 years of white baptist private school = sunken place like a mf).
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I think we don't talk enough about how the whole don't touch my hair thing is in large part about not allowing yourself to be exoticized.
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And the issue with that wasn't about personal space. I'm a theater kid, especially then. We don't have personal space.
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The issue was about my participating in being made other in a space, among friends, where I should have felt/been "normal."
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Don't touch my hair is about personal space and white ppl assuming free access to black bodies, yes, but to be fair, usually they ask!
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"Can I touch your hair" is an offensive question not bc asking to touch ppl is offensive but bc of how it asserts my otherness.
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It reinforces that this black face in this white place is unusual, an oddity, a curiosity, a guest. Not a co-heir to what we too created.
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End of conversation
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