PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

The TerryReport is re-publishing an NPR segment that “has gone viral on the Internet”, as Michel Martin put it. A TerryReport comment is included at the end of the piece.

March 22, 2010

Today, we hear from Tell Me More guest host Allison Keyes.

This week we're going to talk about hair. To touch ” or not to touch, that is the question.

And as far as I'm concerned the answer is nearly always, no.

OK,  let me explain why this really annoys me.

I'm African-American, and I wear my hair natural. That means in an Afro, or in twists, or some other style that showcases my kinky hair in the tight curls in which it grows from my scalp. It is not chemically straightened. In other words — think India.Arie — NOT Beyonce!

And for the past few weeks, I've been rocking an Afro puff: a round fluffy puff perched atop a braided or twisted up-do. It is fierce!

And I must admit — the texture does look inviting to touch. But walking up and palming my puff?! Particularly without permission? Can I Just Tell YOU — speaking colloquially — that is not cool.

I think it is a race issue — as well as a personal space issue. The space issue seems obvious. I see it as a violation as unwanted as those who approach pregnant women — hands out — and start rubbing their bellies.

The race issue is a little more tricky.

For example, I was walking one day recently, puff held high, when a white woman walked up and just grabbed it — cooing, "Oh that's so cute!"

Fighting back my impulse to grab her wrist, I simply stepped back and growled, "Don't touch my hair!"

She reared back, offended, "Well, I don't see what the big deal is!"

That response is exactly the problem.

In what realm of reality is it OK to walk up to a person and — without her permission — lay your hands on her body?

I took a look around Google, wondering about the basis for this distaste that I and many other African-Americans have to acquaintances, co-workers or — most infuriating — strangers, just walking up and grasping away.

On blog after blog, black women railed about the rudeness of folk just walking up and touching their hair.

On another site, womanist-musings.com, in an article called "Can I Touch Your Hair? Black Women and The Petting Zoo," the author noted, "Today white people still feel that they have the right to our bodies." She went on to say, "My blackness and your curiosity does not give you the right to touch me."

Let's have a reality check here. For hundreds of years, whites had permission to do anything they wanted to black people, and that includes things far worse than touching our hair.

Even now, there are still those pesky signs of disrespect, like a white person calling a woman old enough to be their grandmother by her first name. Is it because she's black and therefore doesn't deserve the respect of a title? Don't both acts send a signal that black people are still objects to be treated as one pleases — all without said object's permission?

One Web site actually suggested that blacks try humor or self-deprecation to assuage the hurt feelings of the offended person who has just forcibly touched them. But I think, what you ought to do, is keep your hands outta my hair, unless I invite you to touch it. Whether it's a   $1,000 hair weave, a 10-inch Afro or an Afro puff ... watch out! There could be a mousetrap in there — or worse!

That way, no one's fingers will be injured.

TerryReport comment:

While there is no doubt that people don’t have any right to walk up to anyone and touch their hair, why does this misbehavior, bad manners, have to be read in racial terms? Do the words lighten-up mean anything?

Instead of seeing these things in purely racial terms, why not riff on the idea that these people are just stupid? Why not consider that they didn’t learn anything from their parents and don’t know much now about how to act in public? Does everything in America between lighter skinned and darker skinned people have to be seen as a big, racial deal?

No one has the right to touch anyone without some sort of permission being given. Everyone has a right to walk around free from being grabbed or poked at or, for that matter, having random comments made about their appearance. Yet, it happens, doesn’t it?

Does anyone else remember the Seinfeld episode in which out-of-touch-George goes up to a woman, fingers the fabric on her blouse and comments on the quality of the material? She immediately runs to report him to the man who was about to give George a job. Well, the same thing happened to me on a flight back from Europe. One of the (female) flight attendants was admiring the sheen on a recently purchased shirt and she reached over and gave it a feel. I was a little taken aback, but I was not offended. Hey, it was a nice shirt with an unusual appearance. I wished she hadn’t done that, but it was no big deal.

It would seem to me very likely that this sort of behavior by whites is likely part of the “new approachableness” that many whites now feel toward African-Americans. Many are not afraid that they will be reproached for acting friendly and, with Obama in the White House, it is easy to think that barriers are down. After a long period in which blacks and whites were in integrated situations but did not speak, many whites feel much more relaxed now. So, maybe they feel they can act stupid, too, as they might with their white friends.

When my wife was pregnant, many people felt they could walk up and touch her stomach without permission. We hated that behavior. We never fully understood it, why people thought that they somehow owned the pregnancy as much as we did.

Americans in general have a hard time deciding where their space ends and that of those around them begins. People jump into your conversation with comments on elevators, in airplanes, on trains. This sort of thing is simply not done elsewhere in the world.

I would suggest that a more benign view of people wanting to touch an Afro style of hair simply results mainly from ineptitude and bad manners. They don’t know how to act with restraint, they see something they haven’t seen before and they want to make it more personal. They are, in fact, probably trying to show their approval of differences, even if they are going about it in all the wrong ways. Many white people just don’t know how to act around blacks. They haven’t been in many social situations and they have been told, through a variety of means, that black people don’t really want them around. Plus, I would submit that we have a general case of social ineptitude in our society around public behavior.

And, please, keep this in mind: while whites clearly have benefited in many ways by their position in American society, none of them alive today ever owned slaves. It is not right to look at every white American as part of, and a supporter of, an evil system of oppression. Sure, attitudes are handed down generation to generation, but attitudes are also changing. Language like “white people still feel they have a right to our bodies” paints all whites with the same brush and I am not sure the proposition can be proved or disproved. There is no need to tolerate the ignorance of someone thinking they can touch your hair, or any part of your person, without permission.

We, white and blacks in America, misunderstand each other. We have intentionally locked ourselves in separate “cultures” that can touch but never fully blend. The big trap is to believe you know, beyond all question, why other people behave the way they do and to ascribe those behaviors to race. Isn’t it enough to say that you don’t like the way certain whites, or certain blacks, tend to act? We are not required to approve of everything everyone else does, regardless of race or background. We are required to find a way to get along and anything on top of that which helps us overcome the problems generated by the thoughtless intrusions, or simple bad manners, of others would be helpful, too.

Doug Terry, 3.24.10

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