Talk:Kinky hair/Archive 2

Requested move 14 August 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Listed for 7+ days, unable to gauge a consensus for the move from the discussion despite relisting. (non-admin closure) — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 00:16, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Afro-textured hair → Kinky hair – Shouldn't it be better renamed as "Kinky hair"? It is so odd to see "Afro-textured" like if average people called that hair like that. I can't even imagine people saying "Euro-textured" or "Asian-textured", it sounds so ridiculous. Hair types are straight, wavy, curly and kinky. Also this kind of hair is not restricted to only Africans, as exposed above with a picture of a New Zealander with kinky hair. 148.0.111.15 (talk) 00:32, 14 August 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:00, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

• This is an important change that should be made as soon as possible. JaneOlds (talk) 01:47, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose: I disagree. Kinky hair is used mostly in American societies. Most people find Kinky/nappy offensive. I agree that "Afro-textured" might not be accurate enough, but it is still the widely accepted name for the hair type, and definitely better than "Kinky". The article lead clearly states that the hair type it is not found only in Africa, and "Kinky hair" already redirects here.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2016 (UTC)


 * What is offensive about a descriptive term that is neutral as well as accurate. Would "coiled" be any better, any less offensive? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:30A:C0A1:1530:F565:5A23:2037:E952 (talk) 15:46, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The definition of "Kinky" doesn't make it in anyway descriptive of the hair type. Afro-textured, on the other hand, does a better job. I don't see anything wrong with "Coiled hair", but has it been used to describe this hair type in reliable sources?--Jamie Tubers (talk) 16:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment: If you look at Talk:Afro-textured hair/Archive 1, there are all kinds of comments about renaming the page. I've looked through all the notes/references with blue links and here are what the various sources call this type of hair: African hair (2 sources), coily hair, curly black hair, black hair (3 sources), coiled or kinky hair, kinky hair, frizzy hair, "ethnic" hair, nappy hair (with the controversy discussed), and African-American hair. Two interesting observations: many of the sources avoid any term/label whatsoever, and not a single one of the sources (with links, that is) use the term "Afro-textured hair." That said, I did find some sources online that say "Afro-textured hair": this Huffington Post article (which also says "Black hair") and others, plus several scholarly articles. Some scholarly articles also say "African-textured hair." In any case, "kinky hair" does not dominate. Wolfdog (talk) 14:41, 17 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Support: Doing a Google Search, "Kinky hair" gives 428,000 results, "Afro-textured" gives 213,000 results, and "Coiled hair" gives 122,000 results. Kinky hair is far more popular than the other two names. When we search just on scholarly articles on Google (scholar.google.com), using Wolfdog’s same link "Afro-textured hair" gives 107 results and "African-textured hair" gives 24 results, while "Kinky hair" gives 8,730 results, and "Coiled hair" gives 1,080 results.


 * There is an overwhelming majority usage of "Kinky hair" and it prevails over "Afro-textured hair" and "Coiled hair", so it is clearly a fallacy to affirm that «In any case, "kinky hair" does not dominate».  Nika de Hitch (talk) 04:59, 18 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Actually, the fallacy is to not look carefully at your own findings. The entire first page of your "Kinky hair" GoogleScholar results talks exclusively about "Kinky hair syndrome" or "Kinky hair disease": i.e. Menkes disease. Are you suggesting that Afro-textured hair is an article about a disease? Just because the phrase "Kinky hair" exists commonly in the universe does not make it related to our particular topic. Wolfdog (talk) 14:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Still, even if one excludes -menkes -disease -syndrome -disorder there are still 2,820 results, which is far more than the 107 results of "Afro-textured", and the 1,080 results for "coiled hair". Nika de Hitch (talk) 13:13, 20 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The term "Afro-textured" does nothing to describe the actual condition of the hair, besides, hyphenated terms like "Afro-American" have fallen from favor and could be considered offensive to some. Do we still call a natural, unprocessed hairstyle an "Afro?" That term has not been in general use for years. JaneOlds (talk) 09:44, 22 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose - While "kinky" may return more results on Google and is the WP:COMMONNAME, we may face some backlash as it is somewhat derogatory. "Coiled" seems like the more neutral description to use. Meatsgains (talk) 16:49, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment: "Kinky" is not derogatory. Nika de Hitch (talk) 06:20, 23 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Ethnic hair texture
As a license cosmetologist I studied all forms of hairstyles and hair Texture and in our books there's no such thing nor does it say Afro textured hair the correctable term is ethnic hair has evolved in the calories as Asian, Indian, African Extra extra extra. I believe to tell should be changed immediately I for once finding it very offensive And completely Incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.195.239 (talk) 01:57, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Keith Jarrett
is suggested as an addition to the picture gallery as a white person with Afro-textured hair, possibly from a distant black ancestor in the Scots-Irish branch or a jewish one in the Hungarian branches of his lineage. 98.4.103.219 (talk) 15:22, 5 March 2019 (UTC)


 * As someone with natural hair who supports natural hair I found this informative. Personally I know a lot about natural hair! I cut all my hair off when I was 21 years old and have never felt better. A couple of things I would change is some of the language. Some language consist of the stereotypical language when discussing natural hair, such as "nappy". I do not refer to my hair as nappy, I can actually run my fingers through it with no problem. I also want to add in some white people with "afro-textured" hair. I personally know tons of white people with afros. Overall this gives anyone and everyone a basic idea of the struggle within the community regarding our hair but it is by no means all information. Exterior research is needed if seeking in depth information or even if you are a new natural wanting to learn about your hair type. There is so much unknown information out there to be shared with the world. One must remember the words of India Arie, "I am not my hair". Susie Carmichael (talk) 19:24, 6 March 2019 (UTC)


 * also Bob Ross 98.4.103.219 (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

The page is nothing but political biased manipulated ramble. What happen to facts and science. Margaret P. Clarke, M.B.A. 21:27, 1 June 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Attackgirl (talk • contribs)

Criticism of "Global Hair Texture Distribution" Map
I recommend the map titled "Global Hair Texture Distribution" be removed, as it is oversimplistic and thus misleading. This is the natural result of where the map originates, Popular Science Monthly Volume 52 - published in the 1890s. I criticize the use of this map mainly because its information was gathered during the time period when Europeans were particularly obsessed with cutting up and categorizing the peoples of the world (in ways that typically fit their own agendas), which often meant the disregarding of some facts, the overemphasis of others, etc. In this map, the end result is that Africa is split in an... interesting way. Especially in Sudan and the Horn, but also in some of the chadic regions. I'm sure this problem applies elsewhere in Africa and on the general global map. I'd also criticize the standard 1-4c system that is in use on this page, as it assumes a linearity of hair-change from straight to ultra-kinky, when things are, infact, much more complex than that.

I am aware that the article acknowledges this issue, but I feel that variations in Afro-type hair are nonetheless not explored in enough depth aside from a few acknowledgements.


 * Sadly, though, when it comes to data/knowledge regarding the state and distribution of indigenous peoples/cultures in their traditional condition and location prior to the mass upheaval done by industrialisation, most of it IS from that era -- and soon after, the entire world changed.
 * Also, it was not the anthropologists who had racist agendas..their work was improperly used by others in later decades to justify racism, but during the first anthropologists' times, the belief in racial hierarchies was so pervasive in ALL of academia, there was no need to find data to "prove" it -- it was simply assumed. So while their earliest work contained some intrinsic racist assumptions (as did all scholarly work back then), it was the anthropologists' very own works that eventually lead to the discovery that those notions were wrong. That some later racists (e.g., Hitler, and others) took their early work out of context to back up their own crackpot theories was highly unfortunate

Firejuggler86 (talk) 11:55, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Article name is misleading
I think this article should be renamed to "kinky hair" because "Afro-textured" hair is found outside of Africa. Insert bad pun here (talk) 21:56, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Halo Code
Sources:


 * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/09/unilever-pledges-to-protect-staff-with-afros-and-dreadlocks
 * https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/unilever-hair-discrimination-halo-code/
 * https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/08/first-afro-hair-code-launches-to-protect-black-people-from-hair-discrimination-at-work-13719558/
 * https://www.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/hair/never-worn-natural-hair-work-halo-code-means-now-feel-comfortable/
 * https://www.popsugar.co.uk/beauty/unilever-signs-halo-code-protect-against-hair-discrimination-48043312

Might be worth mentioning in the article. Zazpot (talk) 15:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Globalize
This article has a couple of geographical scope problems.


 * The title of the article's subsection "Politics of Kinky hair in the West" suggests that the subsection presents an multi-national view of the topic. However, the subsection is nested under the "United States" section of the article, which suggests it should present only a national view of the topic. Clearly, there is a contradiction here.
 * The article does not have particularly good coverage of the politics or reception of kinky hair in parts of the world other than the US.

I propose that the "Politics of Kinky hair in the West" subsection should either:


 * be renamed in accordance with the US-centric scope of its parent section (and content from it that relates to other parts of the world should be moved into other parts of the article, to be created if necessary); or
 * be moved entirely to a new top-level section called "Politicisation" or similar (or maybe even a new article called "Politics of kinky hair"). Zazpot (talk) 16:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

jewfro?
What about jewfros though? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.24.246.201 (talk) 03:27, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * People of Jewish hairitage/heritage do not have "Afro" as in people of African descent, hair. False cognate of a sort in hair. Frizzy hair is on the spectrum. Check 3b in the hair texture categories. sheridanford (talk) 15:28, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Orientation matters in the representation of Black Lives and their hair politics
First a preamble to my last edit. I reordered the figure so 4C comes first and 1a last. Why you might ask? I am a Black feminist scholar writing in the period after the COVID19 pandemic of 2020 which intersected with the global movement for Black Lives. Last year, we confronted not only social institutions but also the narratives and discourses that feed global exposure through objects that perpetuate anti-Black sexism and racism internationally and particularly on the Internet aka world wide web.

In my AFK ("away from the keyboard") life, I teach undergraduates in cultural anthropology courses and ethnomusicology courses how our mental maps of reality (or learned ways of thinking, feeling, believing, and behaving aka CULTURE with a capital "C") is shaped and oriented among human beings through objects like maps. Maps carry hidden obvious messages about anti-Blackness. Map making in the Western World privilege countries ruled and populated by people with white or lighter skins. Power was distributed in colonial ruled nations along skin color as well, if not also by religion or royal heirachies.

Why North is represented as "on top" of a map, or "at the top" the world, a tangible globe found in schoolrooms, or in other representations of a spherical planet floating in space on an axis around the Sun is due to that roots of empire and colonial racism. Quote me: "Anything that separates the human race is a form of racism."

Remember, there is no up and down, top or bottom on a ball or a planet if you look at it from outside its universe. It is only the users who define different orientations to space and time as we know from cultural anthropology (Read: Lera Boroditisky's excellent article in Nature "How Language Shapes Thought" to learn how the Kuk Thayorre orient their bodies to space unlike people living in North America or the UK.

So North is up on a map due to ethnocentrism of colonialization from the standpoint of the British, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch colonizers. These colonial empires wanted the representations of the world to mirror their conceptions, their mental maps from their standpoint and power over other worlds.

Now to my point about the figure listing hair textures in this article. The same disorientation to Blackness or afro-textured hair is reinscribed by the figure before today. I reoriented the list from 1A to 4C where the texture that mostly Black people would be interested in learning on WP comes last, should come first. So I simply repositioned the categories so 4C comes first. It doesn't change the context and is not or should not be considered "original". It merely re-presents, re-contextualizes, and centers those for whom the knowledge of afro-textured hair and its taxonomy was invented. The system was invented to center Black or African hair textures in ways that privileges not only Black consumers of hair products and salons, but Black beauty and aesthetics.

The cognitive beliefs (aka cognitive bias) throughout the English Wikipedia is that the number 1 tends to be automatically considered with higher esteem in most orders of information. When it comes to thinking about groups of people or nations this also tends to be the case. I avoid saying true here because that is a misnomer. This is about situational negotiations of perceptions of reality not of reality. But think about it. If one had to choose between 1 and 5 apples, cakes, lovers (well...wait. That foils the argument if you're a monogamist), or if you had to choose between 1 and 5 regarding tangible money in any currency (USD, EUR, CNY [China Yuan], GHS [Ghana New Cedi], or BBD [Barbados dollar]), ordinary people would grant greater esteem to the higher number. In other words, numbers are signals of different kinds of meanings or value dependent upon the context.

The context for this article has EVERYTHING to do with decolonizing hair politics, marketing, and manufacturing as well as decentering the ideal of Whiteness in beauty and hair politics globally. So the reorientation was important to framing the information to avoid recreating a cognitive bias from colonial empire. I will cite the reorientation from this image and website. sheridanford (talk) 16:01, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Overgeneralization
This article appears to engage in generalization by using the terms "kinky hair," "Black hair" and "afro-textured hair" interchangeably. I'm confused by this because the 3C hair type, which is reasonably common in people of Sub-Saharan African descent, is not kinky. While rare, it's also possible for black people to have wavy or even straight hair (mostly East Africans), or conversely, for non-African people to have kinky hair. I think this article should make it clearer that African hair can have almost any shape or texture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.14.139.2 (talk) 05:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

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