December 10, 2025 • 42 mins
Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.
A school bans “edges,” a graduation blocks braids, a child with locks is told to stay home—on the surface, they’re dress code debates. Look closer and you see a lineage of power: colonial respectability, “imperial cleanliness,” and the policing of Black and Brown bodies through hair. We sit down with artist, educator, and gender rights advocate amilcar sanatan to map how grooming rules took root, why they persist, and what it takes to change them without sacrificing learning or dignity.
We unpack the language of “neat,” “professional,” and “acceptable,” tracing it from plantation hierarchies to modern handbooks. Together, we connect scholarship and lived experience—Rastafari resistance and the Coral Gardens legacy, the gendered training of girls into silence and boys into “tidiness,” and the quiet violence of sending students home over texture or style. Along the way, we explore key legal and cultural flashpoints from Trinidad and Tobago’s school hair code to Jamaica’s Kensington Primary case, and why each decision matters for access to education, equal employment, and human rights.
This conversation doesn’t stop at critique. We highlight grassroots wins and everyday acts of repair: natural hair days led by young teachers, principals revising codes to center hygiene and safety rather than assimilation, and families rethinking what professionalism looks like in Caribbean contexts. The goal isn’t disorder—it’s dignity. Keep students in class. Measure readiness by curiosity and conduct, not curls. Celebrate cultural expression while maintaining clear, fair standards that actually support learning. If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for more Caribbean history and culture, and leave a review telling us how grooming rules shaped your school or workplace. Your stories move this work forward.
amílcar peter sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator and activist. He is from Trinidad and Tobago and currently working between East Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Helsinki, Finland. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: About Kingston (Peekash Press) and The Black Flâneur: Diary of Dizain Poems, Anthropology of Hurt (Ethel Zine & Micro Press).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, Alexandra Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics, and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
(00:20):
Hello, hello everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofStrictly Facts, a guide to
Caribbean History and Culture,where we examine the histories,
cultures, and social dynamicsthat continue to shape the
Caribbean today.
In this episode, we're exploringa topic that may seem small on
the surface, grooming and hair,things like that, but is deeply
(00:41):
connected to larger issues ofcolonial control, race, gender,
and identity in the region.
You may have seen the recentposts and subsequent
conversations on social mediathat went viral after a local
school, high school specificallyin Jamaica, deemed that they
would bar girls from wearingedges this school year.
(01:01):
And while that I know from youknow reading it that that
specific situation was reallyit's a bit more complicated than
our discussion today becausethere were concerns about safety
and access to restrooms andthings of that nature, it does
tangentially bring thisrecurring issue that we have as
we're talking about it today interms of hair, grooming, and
(01:24):
what is acceptable, quoteunquote, in schools and in the
workplaces.
And so grooming policies inschools, um, public spaces,
workplaces in the region havelong been shaped by colonial
ideas, enforcing standards ofappearance that reflect European
notions of respectability,cleanliness, hierarchy, etc.
(01:45):
These rules have historicallypoliced black and brown bodies
specifically, and the groupsfacing particularly harsh
discrimination, while genderedexpectations meant that boys and
girls were often held todifferent standards.
And so joining me today is mybig friend, longtime friend.
We met on a plane, is a wholestory, but we won't get into the
(02:07):
full story.
Um my friend, artist, activist,he does many things, wears many
hats, educator as well.
Amilkar Sanatan, whose work isat the helm of gender rights in
the Caribbean.
So thank you so much, Amilkar,for joining us.
Why don't you tell our listenersa little bit more about you?
Where, of course, I know theanswer, but where um in the
(02:29):
region is home to you and whatinspired your work as you know a
public intellectual andactivist.
SPEAKER_01 (02:36):
Thank you very much, Alex.
As I said, my name is AmilkaSanatan.
I am an interdisciplinaryartist, educator, and activist.
I am from Trinidad and Tobago,where I spent most of my life.
I went to secondary school inBarbados shortly, so I carry the
traditions of Frank Warrell,George Laman, and Bad Gi Alreana
(02:57):
in my brains.
I've developed closerprofessional and personal
connections to Jamaica and morebroadly had the privilege of
working through most Caribbeancountries in one capacity or the
other.
For the moment, I'm working on aliterary and visual anthropology
project called Imagining Futuresin Imagins of the State at the
University of Helsinki inFinland under the leadership of
(03:21):
the Finnish-born anthropologistMarek Ford, who has spent
several decades in Trinidad andTobago doing ethnographic work
and cultural studies.
You know, sometimes when we talkabout what we do, we try to
think about our influences.
It's very difficult to narrowdown my influences, what brought
me to the work.
I see so many forces that unlockmy creative imagination, as Rex
(03:46):
Nettleford would call it.
I call it the car imaginationand my practice.
That's the philosophy of my artpractice, the Caribbean creative
imagination.
One of the first influenceswould have been my family.
Both of my parents were part ofa small but growing upwardly
mobile, educated, middle, andprofessional classes to call it.
(04:06):
But their formation and thatpost-independence intelligentsia
came about in the Black PowerRevolution.
So we had new names.
Names of third worldrevolutionaries.
My big brother, Fidel Castro.
I am Amilka Cabral.
My younger brother, Marcus Gavi.
New ways of thinking abouteconomic participation for
(04:27):
majority classes, appreciatingspiritual baptists, Ram Neal
celebrations, the rise of folkhymns in the Catholic Church,
and so on.
I grew up listening to CalypsoIntense, went to panyards to
burn hours with friends andlater performed spoken wood in
them.
Mur Hutch, what I'll call theadorable revolutionary, was a
novelist, educator, activist,comrade in the Grenada
(04:50):
Revolution.
But she also embodied a model ofwomen's rights leadership in my
life.
And I was grounded in thateveryday reality.
And I would say where ourconversation would go a bit
later, I was really strugglingwith the weight of some of those
histories.
Elders and authorities who livedthrough these transitions, some
demanded so-called standards forour new independence project.
(05:13):
And we were given strokes andlashes when we didn't meet them.
Some were upset that we hadnewfound freedoms, had nostalgia
for the colonial past.
Like a mathematics teacher ofmine who had a curious sadness
for the years he he salutedcolonial authorities in public
and he flogged us when we didn'tshow deference to authority in
the present.
(05:34):
So in an area that is lessstudied, even, I had an up close
look at the lives of comradesand liberation leaders, the
trauma, neglecting families,seeing some of the abuses or the
lack of skills and resourcespeople had for sustainable
livelihoods after a politicalmoment, after revolution,
(05:55):
especially when that so-calledrevolution was seen as failed.
So there were casualties ofrevolutions and revolutionaries
and distrust to meet standards.
But I'm glad that I came of agein the 21st century with vibrant
social movements, spoken words,feminist women's rights, gender
justice, depatriarchal futures,environmental justice.
(06:17):
And I come from an extractivesociety with oil dollars.
The youth movement with its manytendencies.
The youth movement that broughtme into public policy advocacy,
connecting with youth fromBrazil to Peru, to Belize, to
Guyana, to St.
Lucia.
I worked in communities,development, research
institutions, classrooms, andpolitical parties.
(06:39):
That is the world I've known.
Hello.
SPEAKER_00 (06:43):
Thank you for sharing.
I hope our listeners can tellfrom his introduction that this
is going to be a very deepepisode.
Um, when we were preparing forthis episode, you were like,
yes, I think we should call itthe coloniality of grooming.
And so um, just so our listenersunderstand what that means, I
looked it up before we westarted.
(07:04):
So coloniality refers to thelingering structures of power,
knowledge, and ways of beingthat persist long after formal
colonial rule ends.
Um, and we can put that ends inquotes a little bit because has
it ended?
But you know, anotherconversation.
Um, and those that areperpetuating hierarchies and
(07:24):
domination.
So that I think is sort offoregrounding the root of our
conversation in a lot of ways,because while, you know, it can
certainly be argued that some ofthe more recent occurrences um
that have challenged hairpolicies and grooming, um, what
is socially acceptablehairstyles and schools and
things like that are, you know,for some of our islands, and you
(07:47):
know, in Jamaica and Trinidad'scase, certainly um in
independent spaces, what dothese things come from?
What are they rooted in, and howdo they continue to perpetuate
today is something that Idefinitely want us to
underscore.
SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
Yeah, I I like to work through the back canal, and
so much of our life is a kind ofback canal.
So, for example, just on thesurface, home economics is an
important course that teaches usthe management of the home,
nutrition security, addressingthings like protein poverty, how
(08:22):
to manage household budgets, butthat has been so feminized, and
that is connected to a largerimperial project of teaching
girls in particular how to berespectable ladies, and it even
took on this kind of social workfunction in the post-independent
state.
So we have to sometimes unpackthings to see the receive
(08:44):
meanings, and some of theradical um thinkers and
revolutionists of our time, likeAmilka Cabral, said there's
sometimes positive accruationsthat came from these exchanges.
We could hold on to it, but wemust think critically of it.
And that is why the first backand all I really have to
register in this reasoning isunderstanding that assimilation
(09:06):
was not a process that wasexclusively happening in the
Francophone Caribbean or DutchCaribbean.
I don't think many writerscommit that error, but I have
heard about l'assimilationdiscussed as a specific feature
of colonial societies, and it'suseful to grapple with the ways
there are continuities in thepresent, in the post-colonial
(09:29):
nation state that you spoke to,Alex, with independent and
republican statuses.
So Alison Bashford, anAustralian-based historian,
published a particularlyinsightful book in 2004 called
Imperial Hygiene (09:42):
A Critical History of Colonialism,
Nationalism, and Public Health.
And she talks about that conceptof imperial cleanliness, which
was part of the colonialproject, which is very much part
of urban planning and renewaldevelopment that I study with
latrines and the eradication ofpit latrines, and that is also
connected to education systems.
(10:04):
In the Caribbean, we place a lotof psychological effort in who
is a dirty boy, what's smellingnasty, so and a racist
association of blackness withthe so-called stink, dirty, and
unruly.
So the back and all we need tounderstand is clearly that
colonialism does not simplydiscipline space or politics, it
(10:28):
disciplines bodies, it orderswho belongs, where and why.
So orderly, disciplined,respectable, quote unquote
professional workers, girls,boys, and subjects were groomed.
And we were very well groomed.
One of the major sources oftrauma, conflict, and yes,
violence in Kragan homes isaround grooming.
(10:49):
Older women disciplining girls'hair on patios and verandas,
hair coming on Sundays were notalways love stories.
Parents shining girls for thelength of their skirts or the
print on their bodies anduniforms during puberty.
Of course, boys were given licksfor being sweaty in primary
school and were expected to goto the barber routinely to trim
(11:11):
the hair and keep a so-calledneat hairstyle.
So we have mislabeled thesethings as unnatural, and natural
hair becomes messy, unkept, andthen we have colonial contempt
and designations of peoplereferring to them as they would
have referred to fields and foodcrops on plantations.
So grooming policy in schoolsinstitutionalize this nonsense.
(11:35):
And I never identify with thatlittle boy that they had an
outline of that they threw asthe ideal male students in my
secondary school rule book.
Hair codes and grooming policieswere not for boys like me.
And I paid a very high price forit, growing out my hair in
Barbados and Trinidad andTobago.
Now, in Trinidad and Tobago,since 2023, the state has
(11:59):
established a national schoolhair code that has little effect
to protect students who affirmtheir cultural identities by
their hair.
The National School Hair Codeprotects schools, namely
denominational and prestigeschools, with defining their own
rules and limiting theintervention of the state in
rights protection.
(12:20):
All codes apply, but always, andthey use this language, in
compliance with individual hairschool rules.
So, Alex, I know about Papy Showwith good politics, but this is
entirely a papy show with badpolitics.
And the change must come fromthe ground up on decolonizing
education and tackling thisBabylonian and beauty regime of
(12:40):
national hair codes.
SPEAKER_00 (12:42):
Thank you for I think painting not only like a
historical context for us,right?
But also bringing it to thepresent with current um legal
statutes and things and how theyare still being challenged and
repudiated in many ways.
I do want us to sit a little bitwith this ideal of Victorian
respectability.
That's my way of maybe framingit, but you talked about in
(13:04):
terms of the colonial project,which, you know, I think that's
a more general term because inmany ways we all um differed in
terms of who was the colonialpower.
But in many ways, this thisproject, colonial
respectability, worked in asense to, as you outlined for
us, define cleanliness, to findum who was of value to make
(13:29):
standards on who could get jobs,right?
What you had to look like in theworkplace to even get a job to
even be giving an interview inmany ways.
Um but there are also differentaspects of this.
I think I'd be remiss if wedidn't talk about the Coral
Gardens Massacre, for instance,in 1963 in Jamaica, in which
it's a longer story that I maybefor the sake of our conversation
(13:51):
won't get into, but um therewere disagreements between the
police and Rastas in MontegoBay, um, or near the Montego Bay
area in Jamaica.
Rastas are scapegoated for theincident.
And at the time, AlexanderBustamante is telling you know
police to haul in all theRastas, dead or alive.
And in many ways, part of thatsort of scapegoating, part of
(14:14):
that social control system wasalso giving police authorities
the right to cut Rasta's hair,um, cut their dreads, right?
And I think to talk about wherethese standards come from and
how they've emanated um andevolved over time, that's one
(14:34):
for me that I think it's not theonly one, certainly, of course.
Um, but if anybody knowsanything about Rastafari and the
um, I don't even think, youknow, to say love of their hair
is enough of a word.
And we can talk about our ownexperiences as well.
Um, but that for me is, youknow, it's a it's a sacrament in
(14:54):
many ways.
And to allow police to do thisis sacrilegious, right?
Um, and so that's a moment forme where I think is very clear
that we hold that in terms ofthis conversation and talk about
it in tandem.
Um, but there are so manyothers, I think, in a lot of
ways, when we talk about blackpower in the Caribbean in the
70s and 80s, hair doesn'talways, you know, get uplifted
(15:18):
in this conversation, but in thesame way, right?
Um, that as people were sort ofadvocating for changes and
evolution in our post-colonialworld, hair becomes very part of
that.
It's a very integral sign of howpeople were campaigning for
improved rights um andempowerment and access to
anything, to to work um to theseschools, hair becomes part of
(15:42):
that.
And so there are so manydifferent, I think, angles to
this conversation and many waysthat we could take this
conversation, but I definitelywanted us to sort of underscore
those very important moments forus in the Caribbean region.
SPEAKER_01 (15:55):
Yes, and one of the things I really like your
discussion and what you weretrying to speak to that
Victorian is important tounderstand these colonial
projects are also shaped bycontext from which they emerged.
There were forms of social classrepudiations that happened in
Europe against people who werenot aligned with these beauty
(16:18):
ideals.
The difference is that thatfunction on the level of social
class and exclusion.
In the case of places like theCaribbean or Latin America or in
Africa or in Asia, they thoughtit was blended with racism.
So you were innately inhuman orsubhuman.
That is the difference in oursituation.
(16:40):
And with the Coral Gardensmassacre of 1963 in Montigo B.
Some people think of it as badFriday.
What this moment taught me ishow in the independence era of
the post-colonial state, westill struggle to recognize the
rights of groups in oursocieties.
It's as if we missed the pointof independence, not only as
(17:03):
freedoms and political texts bythe constitution, but our total
investment in a project thatrecognizes, affirms, and
respects the humanity of ourpeople and the environments of
our spaces.
But let's be clear, in 2017there was an apology by the
(17:23):
Jamaican state, and that bringsme to a lot of my work.
What does repair and reparationslook like in the post-colony?
Our freedoms being fought forwon and compromised in the
period of independence.
One of the less studied regionsin the Anglo-Caribbean is the
(17:44):
Eastern Caribbean, in terms ofthe vibrancy of its Rastafari
movement.
We have rastafari who were putin jails for Myronic possession,
killed in unclear and uncannycircumstances without serious
justice, and many individualstudents protesting the
domination of colonial schoolrules against their individual
(18:05):
expression.
How do we reckon with thesehistories and move forward?
So the trauma that we carry fromcolonialism was not our fault,
but the independence of thoughtand action, sovereignty of the
imagination, and creativity innation building and healing are
all our responsibilities.
(18:26):
Caribbean society was a greatdebt to Rastafari, a movement
seen as ground-up, proper,imaginative, prophetic,
liberatory movement, which movedfrom Jamaica and captured the
world's imagination.
I walked through Helsinki andrandom people shout out
Rastafari, Bruce Out in Mali'sredemption song.
(18:47):
Little children grab my ear inVenezuela and so on.
Of course, these engagements canbe problematic around race,
gender, and sexuality, butthere's also a deep respect for
it around the world, whichconnects me to many movements,
struggles, and peoples resistingcolonial, capitalist,
patriarchal, Babylonian regimes.
SPEAKER_00 (19:09):
I think in that sense, right, I also want us to
talk about the gendered aspectof this coloniality of grooming.
And I think maybe in a large wayyou can speak to it from your
work specifically in terms ofyour work in politics, that
there is a distinction, right?
Between you can say boys andgirls, you can say women and men
(19:33):
in the workplace, um, but howfemininity and masculinity have
been impacted by these sort of,you know, this coloniality of
grooming and and hair, and howhave these sort of policies
reinforced gendered expectationsin the region, even as well.
SPEAKER_01 (19:50):
Yeah, well, if I may, you have to give me the
license to speak about aCaribbean reality that might
scare some of your listeners,yeah, Alex.
Some people really don't knowwhat go on in these islands.
It it seems strange to know thatthese regimes continue with the
level of gusto that they have.
(20:13):
It's so intense to everydaylife.
So while there are specifickinds of discrimination against
boys of African descent who growhere, especially dreadlocks,
considering their exclusion fromnational security service, some
jobs in the financial sector andhospitality sectors and so on,
young men have also been reallythreatened with the projections
(20:36):
of being seen as a failure.
And one of the interestingconversations that we could look
at or cultural artifacts wouldbe the Calypsonian gypsy song
Little Black Boy, and it bringstogether a lot of the what I
call those kind of anti-blackboyisms, rife in our society.
He sings little black boy, go toschool and learn, little black
(20:59):
boy, show some concern, littleblack boy.
Education is the key, so get offthe street and out of poverty.
So there's that anti-blackboyism that could exist in our
society, and for a time, a lotof blows, licks, and lashes,
floggings that happen to boyswho were seen as sweaty and all
(21:20):
relief.
But yeah, there's a genderparanoia when it comes to
grooming and girls that we can'tignore.
Black, brown, white Caribbeangirls are disciplined from this
transition of girl to a lady,and we literally deploy the term
that is unbecoming.
(21:42):
There are school rule books thatforbid girls from even eating in
public in the Caribbean.
That is seen as unbecoming.
And then we act surprised whenwe eat doubles in Trinidad and
Guyana and see that it is stilla masculinized space where most
women eat privately in a corneroutside of the crowd, or they
eat in a small group of women,or they really prefer to eat
(22:05):
doubles to go, but just to putit in a bag, or have it in their
vehicle and get in and out ofthe car when they buy a double.
We literally have genderpatterns to eat in street food
in the street.
Girls are training to docilityand respectability.
So, yes, there's a flair rightnow with Jamaican students and
edges, but there's so muchpolicing on girls' hairstyles,
(22:28):
jewelry, speech, expressions,policing of noise.
If girls could laugh out loud,so many girls cover their mouths
when they laugh because of whatschools did to them, policing of
mobility, how they move in andout of school premises.
What do we really gain fromthis?
So, a lot of these actions bringme to a deeper understanding of
(22:51):
the continuities of thesefeatures in Caribbean life and
Olive Senior's Colonial GirlsSchool, that poem, um, which was
written before I was born,before you were born, Alex, and
she writes very clearly borrowedimages, will our skins pale,
muffled our laughter, loweredour voices, let out our hymns,
(23:17):
de-kinked our hair, denied oursex in gym tunics and bloomers,
harnessed our voices tomadrigals and genteel ears,
yoked our minds to declension inLatin and the language of
Shakespeare told us nothingabout ourselves.
(23:39):
There was nothing at all.
How those pale northern eyes andaristocratic whispers once
erased us, how our loudness, ourlaughter debased us.
There was nothing left ofourselves, nothing about us at
all.
So I'm being clear, I wanthealthy, ethical, caring,
(24:01):
critical thinking,team-oriented, and knowledgeable
workers and citizens.
All our environment should beclean and sanitary.
People can work to be on time,understand the value of
reasonable, fair, and rationalrules for systems we
collectively contribute to andsustain.
But it's back canal andarbitrary policing of bodies,
(24:24):
adoption of foreign beautyregimes, and an uncritical take
of what we do in development.
Things like weak architecturalplanning and air-conditioned
infrastructures which makeCaribbean workers head to office
with scarves, bands on peoplewearing comfortable sandals and
public buildings and clubs,which really affect mature
(24:46):
citizens, elderly citizens, andstigmatization of people in
sleeveless tops and short pants.
We have to do some work ongetting over it.
SPEAKER_00 (24:56):
I was also going to bring up that poem in a lot of
ways to sort of mark the changesor the lack thereof in a lot of
ways, because I think some ofthe parts of that poem
particularly really range truetoday.
I think you had brought up thepolicy changes earlier, and I
think that sort of, if I'm notmistaken, went with the Trinity
(25:16):
College um graduation incidentin Trinidad, in which some boys
are trying to wear um braids orcane rows, cornrows, um, what
may have you, to theirgraduation and were barred from
attending.
I think that also brings tolight the Kensington primary
school case in Jamaica, um,which went through several court
(25:39):
sort of situations to sort ofeventually, you know, rule that
this child who had locks wasable to go to the school.
The moral of the story is theywere trying to bar the child
from going to the school becauseof her locks.
Um, and it was ruled that, youknow, that wasn't a suitable
reason to bar the child.
There's nothing in terms of thepolicies on how children had to
(26:01):
appear in this school, that thatwas sort of a part of that.
But I definitely want us tospeak to a point that you have
brought up that it's more thanjust, oh, you know, your hair is
unkempt, quote unquote.
And, you know, how this affectsthe person, it affects how they
move in the world.
Um, it also affects access in alot of ways.
(26:22):
If your school has deemed thatyour hair isn't appropriate, um,
now you're missing a day ofclass, right?
Um, now you have to go home, youhave to wait how many days, and
you know, I don't believe in thesort of, oh, it's the child's
fault or oh, it's the parents'fault, because there I think are
many complications, you know, tosort of place the blame in that
(26:43):
way.
But I I'm really particularlykeen on this conversation of,
you know, education and how muchschool can be missed as a result
of this, right?
Um, where are we sort of drawingthe line between what is
acceptable and like studentsneed to learn?
And I think the part of methat's very striking is
(27:04):
oftentimes students are when Isee videos that go viral, people
are like, yo, I want to be atschool.
I want to be in my socialstudies class or whatever it is
today, I want to be in myEnglish class and they're
sending me home.
Um, and so that is somethingthat I also want us to unpack a
little bit because it impactslearning, it impacts, as you
noted, you know, how we evolveas citizens um and place our
(27:26):
sort of part in the world andeven how and when people choose
to sort of reclaim this autonomyover their hair, their bodies,
etc.
SPEAKER_01 (27:36):
Uh thank you, Alex.
And shout out to TrinityCollege, my brother's school in
the US.
And um, but that is directlyrelated to my reasoning.
My first public activism was onchallenging hair codes on school
grooming policy.
In sixth form, I was punishedand on the receiving end of a
(27:58):
lot of prejudice by faculty andmy teachers because of my
decision to affirm my culturalheritage and grow my hair.
In fact, um there was interestby a number of teachers on
withdrawing my participation inthe national youth parliament in
Trinidad because they feltsymbolically that would have
(28:23):
been an open defiance of theschool's rules.
So I did a petition, I canvassedin corridors, I designed a hear
me out campaign, we plasteredthe picture of Boondocks Huey
Freeman on notice boards, and myschool principal ripped up the
(28:44):
petition in front of my face,man.
Oh no, we got Miss Joan Mason.
She gave me my first lesson inpower.
That paper not moving her hand.
I was very clear on the powerdynamics.
Um, but my consciousness wasexpanding.
And at that time, I read theedited collection, The Black
(29:07):
Power Revolution 1970, aretrospective, edited by Selvin
Ryan and Time Moon Stewart.
Now, anybody who knows thatbook, that's really a book of
conference proceedings from uhkind of 20-year retrospective
conference on the 1970revolution.
I think it was out in 1990.
So that is very umtestimony-based.
(29:30):
I got a good sense of how peoplewere reckoning the afterlives of
the revolution, and uh it had aninteresting temporality.
I was asking questions of myselfin 2006, 2007.
What did that mean for me?
So it was really a firstintroduction into public
(29:52):
politics, intimatelyunderstanding the politics of
change.
And Amilka Cabral said, We arenot fighting for ID.
In people's heads.
So I had to get my hands dirtywith it.
A lot of emotions, a sense ofloss for a 17-year-old.
But it was part of my politicalformation.
(30:13):
And the principal who enforcedmany of those rules became my
greatest supporter in life.
A mother-like figure, Mrs.
Joan Mason.
She's a special, so with aspecial contribution to the
educational landscape of Trinaand Tobago.
And if I may, I would just liketo read a poem to honor what she
(30:40):
has done for many.
The lessons she learned with myintervention and the lessons I
would have learned with hers.
And a lesson in compassion.
And also to honor my mother.
I wrote a poem at that time inmy mother's backyard.
For Linda Claudia the Foo andMrs.
Joan Mason.
(31:02):
She was a cocoa brown skin girlfrom a derelict village, Four
Road Stamina.
She bathed in barrel water, ateblue food, ate what she grew,
wore her best dress, straws,shoes.
She was poor, her family knew.
Children were blessings, notexpenses.
Fourth daughter of TapiaHousewife, Coco Pile Creation,
(31:24):
Damned by colonization, herhair.
My mother's mother that iscurled like wind spending around
bamboo shoots, carrying thewhispers of Dwens and Papa Bar.
I imagine my mother in tears.
My grandmother with her rat tailcomb ordering the dense forest
of her daughter's hair.
Years later, never would shehave known she would be tugging
(31:46):
the hair of her son.
In the patio at the back of thehouse, my mother, that is.
As a child, they called me wild,uncivilized.
For my mother, I was root.
Root in our backyard.
Root in the bush.
Root in history.
At times she requested, cut yourhair, son, cut your hair.
(32:10):
On my way to school, cut yourhair, son, cut your hair.
But I admire your power to fightfor what you believe in your
head hard, just like yourfather's.
So the cases of Trinity CollegeMocha and Trinante Bago and
Kensington Primary School inJamaica are major new stories.
(32:31):
But this is something happeningin every Caribbean school,
parish, and jurisdiction.
And I have communication frompeople in Belize and Barbados
who are reaching out to me onthis matter.
I've met with comrades in St.
Lucia who are addressing thisissue decades ago, before you
and I were born.
So our politics need to match aliberation project much more
(32:53):
than the kind of competition andmanagement models that dominate
our systems at this time.
And I would really want to holdon to the words of George Laman,
who said by politics, I don'tmean the party, the specific
ideology or the professionalpolitician.
Politics for me includes theteacher, technician, and poet.
Politics is a collectiveenterprise by people who have
(33:15):
been given the opportunity forthe first time to build a
society the way they want tobuild it.
SPEAKER_00 (33:23):
Thank you for sharing not only your poem, um,
but also I think this idea ofchange and evolution as it goes.
I feel like in parts of ourconversation, we've been like,
you know, we haven't changedenough, which is true.
Um, but there have beenincremental changes, right?
I think even for me, um,although this it's from a
(33:43):
different perspective in asense, because I went to school
in the US, so I didn't have thatsame, the same experiences of
the some of the cases andstudents were talking about in
the region.
Um, but my family's response tome locking my hair was very was
very much so why?
And I don't think this is a goodidea, and maybe she's just going
(34:04):
through a phase um and all thesethings, and now we are almost a
decade later, and people havebeen like, you know, say and
wanting to know who does my hairbecause if when they're going
home, they think they want to,and so I will say that you know,
it might not necessarily be onthe scale um of you know the
(34:24):
schools and um some of theconversations that we've been
having today, but I havedefinitely seen into more
intimate changes and evolutions.
Um, you know, people have saidthings to me a decade ago that
they probably don't rememberthat naturally I would not
forget.
Um, but the things havedefinitely spun around and
they've you know changed andevolved.
(34:46):
And I think that's also um inlarge way credited to social
media in some ways, but alsothis sort of more acceptance of
natural hair from a globalperspective, I will say.
There is a current act inCalifornia, it's the Crown Act
um of California, which hasprohibited discrimination um
(35:07):
based on hair texture andprotective styling associated
with race and national origin.
And so, as um our listenersmight imagine, was really
heralded by black women who wereum, you know, being told that
their hair wasn't acceptable,whether that was, you know,
their own natural hair, wigs,um, leaves, protective styles,
(35:27):
etc.
I bring that up just to sort ofsay that, you know, there are
some changes, and I think insome ways, things that we can
learn from one another as adiaspora are very important.
And I would love to see umsomething like that sort of
replicated, you know, in a in aCaribbean way for us to to sort
of break down some of thesebarriers.
(35:48):
My listeners know that this isone of my favorite questions.
You have brought several to thefore already because you you
brought the colonial girls poem,you brought little black boy,
but I didn't know if you had anyother favorite instances of how
you know hair abundance andcelebration shows up in the
Caribbean, um, in terms of youknow how how we feel about our
(36:12):
hair.
SPEAKER_01 (36:13):
Yeah, I may have to betray a question.
SPEAKER_00 (36:17):
That sounds like you have a whole list.
SPEAKER_01 (36:19):
I have, but I want to give a warning.
I want to give a warning.
I have to cite the great 20thcentury philosopher of the
African Atlantic philosophicaltraditions, Robert Nestorley,
known as Bob Martin.
SPEAKER_00 (36:38):
I didn't know where you were going with this, but
yes, Kendra.
SPEAKER_02 (36:41):
He says, You're running and you're running and
you're running away, you'rerunning and the running and the
running away, you're running andyou're running and you're
running away, you're running andyou're running, but you can't
run away from yourself, can'trun away from yourself, can't
run away from yourself, can'trun away from yourself, can run
(37:06):
away from yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (37:07):
I don't know much times, Bob has to tell you you
cannot run away from yourself,and I think that song, poem,
prophetic warning, custodianshipfor Caribbean societies allows
us to protect what we are doinghere on this nation-building
(37:29):
project.
I would also say we could lookat Colin Robinson's collection
of poems.
You have your father hard head,it's published in 2016, and he
brings about a criticalmasculinity's black personhood,
family conflicts, violence, andsexuality.
And then, third, this is reallya shout-out.
(37:51):
I want to hail out theincreasingly several young women
educators in secondary schools,African and Indian in the
Caribbean, have been hostingnatural hair days.
Shout out to them for this quietact of institutional resistance
and pick up the principals andthe deems who endorse this
(38:13):
proposal coming from these youngteachers.
I see your videos online, peoplelook beautiful, good things.
My secondary school has sincechanged their approach to boys
growing hair as well.
And I see their efforts to havewhat we call ethnic wear days
where children dress in saris,dashikis, indigenous and chinese
clothing.
(38:33):
So big up Bishop and C TrinityCollege and China to be good
too.
SPEAKER_00 (38:38):
Thank you.
I think I'm glad you betrayedthe question a little.
As much as I'm always keen on usupholding, you know, how this
work shows up in our popularculture, there is also so much
work happening on the ground.
So thank you for upholding, youknow, these changes and ways
that these things are evolvingin schools.
Um, my last question, Idefinitely want us to end on, is
(39:00):
that given sort of you know howthings go viral now and how
things are changing, uh, what doyou hope our listeners take away
from the historical andcontemporary significance of our
hair and the coloniality of whowe are in Caribbean societies
today?
SPEAKER_01 (39:21):
I'm talking to every student who's discerning.
I'm talking to every parent,every uncle, every tanti, every
Aji, every Aja, everybody in theCaribbean.
I'm talking to scholars whostudy our field and region,
(39:43):
understand the Caribbean presentas much as you can.
I want people to beethnographically present in
Caribbean society and space.
We have passionate conversationsabout youth and discipline, but
we could also have passionateconversations about personal and
(40:04):
collective freedoms, humanrights, dignity, a culturally
grounded way of life, systems,and nation building.
How shall I live?
How shall I govern?
And we could pursue thesequestions beginning with
ourselves, reckoning with ourhistories and imagining
(40:24):
sovereign futures.
We also have the right tobeauty, beauty in our eyes and
self-definition.
We must be beautiful on ourtones, and we could show the
world that.
SPEAKER_00 (40:37):
That's a beautiful note to end on.
I thank you, my friend, forjoining me for this episode.
Uh I hope our listeners walkedaway with as much as I did
because I think in a lot ofways, you know, the conversation
as we we've uh highlighted ismultifaceted, um, it is a bit
complicated.
It's also nuanced depending onwhere we are in the region,
(40:59):
right?
And the many things that go withthat.
But it's one that I think wasreally called for, you know, for
me when I saw some of thosestuff going viral of late.
But it's something that I wouldlike to see not, you know, be be
such a question, be be such anissue recurringly.
I would like to see our studentsin school.
(41:22):
I would like to see, you know,people not feeling like they are
barred from getting jobs forwhatever reason because of how
they look.
I would like to see it also notbe tokenized, right?
Where if you are a performerworking at a resort, you might
can have locks because you'redoing the pseudo bob Marley
thing.
(41:43):
But if you're behind the desk orwhatever, these are not.
So all of these things to say, Ithink, as you put it very well,
love ourselves um and all ourdualities and all of our beauty.
And so, with that, as I said,thank you for joining me for
this episode.
It is a long time coming, andMiss Smotley have your oath
(42:05):
because a long time we could dothis, but you know, nothing to
do before it's time.
So long time we're still sothank you for joining me for
this episode to our listeners.
Um, I will link everything thatwe discussed on the um strictly
fact syllabus, as you know.
And till next time, look a more.
If you have any thoughts, um, ifyou want to connect with any of
(42:28):
us, be sure to send me a DM andI will, you know, we can talk
and take it from there.
But till next time, look them.
Thanks for tuning in to StrictlyFacts.
Visit strictlyfactspodcast.comfor more information from each
episode.
Follow us at Strictly Facts Podon Instagram and Facebook and at
StrictlyFacts PD on Twitter.
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, Alexandra Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics, and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
(00:20):
Hello, hello everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofStrictly Facts, a guide to
Caribbean History and Culture,where we examine the histories,
cultures, and social dynamicsthat continue to shape the
Caribbean today.
In this episode, we're exploringa topic that may seem small on
the surface, grooming and hair,things like that, but is deeply
(00:41):
connected to larger issues ofcolonial control, race, gender,
and identity in the region.
You may have seen the recentposts and subsequent
conversations on social mediathat went viral after a local
school, high school specificallyin Jamaica, deemed that they
would bar girls from wearingedges this school year.
(01:01):
And while that I know from youknow reading it that that
specific situation was reallyit's a bit more complicated than
our discussion today becausethere were concerns about safety
and access to restrooms andthings of that nature, it does
tangentially bring thisrecurring issue that we have as
we're talking about it today interms of hair, grooming, and
(01:24):
what is acceptable, quoteunquote, in schools and in the
workplaces.
And so grooming policies inschools, um, public spaces,
workplaces in the region havelong been shaped by colonial
ideas, enforcing standards ofappearance that reflect European
notions of respectability,cleanliness, hierarchy, etc.
(01:45):
These rules have historicallypoliced black and brown bodies
specifically, and the groupsfacing particularly harsh
discrimination, while genderedexpectations meant that boys and
girls were often held todifferent standards.
And so joining me today is mybig friend, longtime friend.
We met on a plane, is a wholestory, but we won't get into the
(02:07):
full story.
Um my friend, artist, activist,he does many things, wears many
hats, educator as well.
Amilkar Sanatan, whose work isat the helm of gender rights in
the Caribbean.
So thank you so much, Amilkar,for joining us.
Why don't you tell our listenersa little bit more about you?
Where, of course, I know theanswer, but where um in the
(02:29):
region is home to you and whatinspired your work as you know a
public intellectual andactivist.
SPEAKER_01 (02:36):
Thank you very much, Alex.
As I said, my name is AmilkaSanatan.
I am an interdisciplinaryartist, educator, and activist.
I am from Trinidad and Tobago,where I spent most of my life.
I went to secondary school inBarbados shortly, so I carry the
traditions of Frank Warrell,George Laman, and Bad Gi Alreana
(02:57):
in my brains.
I've developed closerprofessional and personal
connections to Jamaica and morebroadly had the privilege of
working through most Caribbeancountries in one capacity or the
other.
For the moment, I'm working on aliterary and visual anthropology
project called Imagining Futuresin Imagins of the State at the
University of Helsinki inFinland under the leadership of
(03:21):
the Finnish-born anthropologistMarek Ford, who has spent
several decades in Trinidad andTobago doing ethnographic work
and cultural studies.
You know, sometimes when we talkabout what we do, we try to
think about our influences.
It's very difficult to narrowdown my influences, what brought
me to the work.
I see so many forces that unlockmy creative imagination, as Rex
(03:46):
Nettleford would call it.
I call it the car imaginationand my practice.
That's the philosophy of my artpractice, the Caribbean creative
imagination.
One of the first influenceswould have been my family.
Both of my parents were part ofa small but growing upwardly
mobile, educated, middle, andprofessional classes to call it.
(04:06):
But their formation and thatpost-independence intelligentsia
came about in the Black PowerRevolution.
So we had new names.
Names of third worldrevolutionaries.
My big brother, Fidel Castro.
I am Amilka Cabral.
My younger brother, Marcus Gavi.
New ways of thinking abouteconomic participation for
(04:27):
majority classes, appreciatingspiritual baptists, Ram Neal
celebrations, the rise of folkhymns in the Catholic Church,
and so on.
I grew up listening to CalypsoIntense, went to panyards to
burn hours with friends andlater performed spoken wood in
them.
Mur Hutch, what I'll call theadorable revolutionary, was a
novelist, educator, activist,comrade in the Grenada
(04:50):
Revolution.
But she also embodied a model ofwomen's rights leadership in my
life.
And I was grounded in thateveryday reality.
And I would say where ourconversation would go a bit
later, I was really strugglingwith the weight of some of those
histories.
Elders and authorities who livedthrough these transitions, some
demanded so-called standards forour new independence project.
(05:13):
And we were given strokes andlashes when we didn't meet them.
Some were upset that we hadnewfound freedoms, had nostalgia
for the colonial past.
Like a mathematics teacher ofmine who had a curious sadness
for the years he he salutedcolonial authorities in public
and he flogged us when we didn'tshow deference to authority in
the present.
(05:34):
So in an area that is lessstudied, even, I had an up close
look at the lives of comradesand liberation leaders, the
trauma, neglecting families,seeing some of the abuses or the
lack of skills and resourcespeople had for sustainable
livelihoods after a politicalmoment, after revolution,
(05:55):
especially when that so-calledrevolution was seen as failed.
So there were casualties ofrevolutions and revolutionaries
and distrust to meet standards.
But I'm glad that I came of agein the 21st century with vibrant
social movements, spoken words,feminist women's rights, gender
justice, depatriarchal futures,environmental justice.
(06:17):
And I come from an extractivesociety with oil dollars.
The youth movement with its manytendencies.
The youth movement that broughtme into public policy advocacy,
connecting with youth fromBrazil to Peru, to Belize, to
Guyana, to St.
Lucia.
I worked in communities,development, research
institutions, classrooms, andpolitical parties.
(06:39):
That is the world I've known.
Hello.
SPEAKER_00 (06:43):
Thank you for sharing.
I hope our listeners can tellfrom his introduction that this
is going to be a very deepepisode.
Um, when we were preparing forthis episode, you were like,
yes, I think we should call itthe coloniality of grooming.
And so um, just so our listenersunderstand what that means, I
looked it up before we westarted.
(07:04):
So coloniality refers to thelingering structures of power,
knowledge, and ways of beingthat persist long after formal
colonial rule ends.
Um, and we can put that ends inquotes a little bit because has
it ended?
But you know, anotherconversation.
Um, and those that areperpetuating hierarchies and
(07:24):
domination.
So that I think is sort offoregrounding the root of our
conversation in a lot of ways,because while, you know, it can
certainly be argued that some ofthe more recent occurrences um
that have challenged hairpolicies and grooming, um, what
is socially acceptablehairstyles and schools and
things like that are, you know,for some of our islands, and you
(07:47):
know, in Jamaica and Trinidad'scase, certainly um in
independent spaces, what dothese things come from?
What are they rooted in, and howdo they continue to perpetuate
today is something that Idefinitely want us to
underscore.
SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
Yeah, I I like to work through the back canal, and
so much of our life is a kind ofback canal.
So, for example, just on thesurface, home economics is an
important course that teaches usthe management of the home,
nutrition security, addressingthings like protein poverty, how
(08:22):
to manage household budgets, butthat has been so feminized, and
that is connected to a largerimperial project of teaching
girls in particular how to berespectable ladies, and it even
took on this kind of social workfunction in the post-independent
state.
So we have to sometimes unpackthings to see the receive
(08:44):
meanings, and some of theradical um thinkers and
revolutionists of our time, likeAmilka Cabral, said there's
sometimes positive accruationsthat came from these exchanges.
We could hold on to it, but wemust think critically of it.
And that is why the first backand all I really have to
register in this reasoning isunderstanding that assimilation
(09:06):
was not a process that wasexclusively happening in the
Francophone Caribbean or DutchCaribbean.
I don't think many writerscommit that error, but I have
heard about l'assimilationdiscussed as a specific feature
of colonial societies, and it'suseful to grapple with the ways
there are continuities in thepresent, in the post-colonial
(09:29):
nation state that you spoke to,Alex, with independent and
republican statuses.
So Alison Bashford, anAustralian-based historian,
published a particularlyinsightful book in 2004 called
Imperial Hygiene (09:42):
A Critical History of Colonialism,
Nationalism, and Public Health.
And she talks about that conceptof imperial cleanliness, which
was part of the colonialproject, which is very much part
of urban planning and renewaldevelopment that I study with
latrines and the eradication ofpit latrines, and that is also
connected to education systems.
(10:04):
In the Caribbean, we place a lotof psychological effort in who
is a dirty boy, what's smellingnasty, so and a racist
association of blackness withthe so-called stink, dirty, and
unruly.
So the back and all we need tounderstand is clearly that
colonialism does not simplydiscipline space or politics, it
(10:28):
disciplines bodies, it orderswho belongs, where and why.
So orderly, disciplined,respectable, quote unquote
professional workers, girls,boys, and subjects were groomed.
And we were very well groomed.
One of the major sources oftrauma, conflict, and yes,
violence in Kragan homes isaround grooming.
(10:49):
Older women disciplining girls'hair on patios and verandas,
hair coming on Sundays were notalways love stories.
Parents shining girls for thelength of their skirts or the
print on their bodies anduniforms during puberty.
Of course, boys were given licksfor being sweaty in primary
school and were expected to goto the barber routinely to trim
(11:11):
the hair and keep a so-calledneat hairstyle.
So we have mislabeled thesethings as unnatural, and natural
hair becomes messy, unkept, andthen we have colonial contempt
and designations of peoplereferring to them as they would
have referred to fields and foodcrops on plantations.
So grooming policy in schoolsinstitutionalize this nonsense.
(11:35):
And I never identify with thatlittle boy that they had an
outline of that they threw asthe ideal male students in my
secondary school rule book.
Hair codes and grooming policieswere not for boys like me.
And I paid a very high price forit, growing out my hair in
Barbados and Trinidad andTobago.
Now, in Trinidad and Tobago,since 2023, the state has
(11:59):
established a national schoolhair code that has little effect
to protect students who affirmtheir cultural identities by
their hair.
The National School Hair Codeprotects schools, namely
denominational and prestigeschools, with defining their own
rules and limiting theintervention of the state in
rights protection.
(12:20):
All codes apply, but always, andthey use this language, in
compliance with individual hairschool rules.
So, Alex, I know about Papy Showwith good politics, but this is
entirely a papy show with badpolitics.
And the change must come fromthe ground up on decolonizing
education and tackling thisBabylonian and beauty regime of
(12:40):
national hair codes.
SPEAKER_00 (12:42):
Thank you for I think painting not only like a
historical context for us,right?
But also bringing it to thepresent with current um legal
statutes and things and how theyare still being challenged and
repudiated in many ways.
I do want us to sit a little bitwith this ideal of Victorian
respectability.
That's my way of maybe framingit, but you talked about in
(13:04):
terms of the colonial project,which, you know, I think that's
a more general term because inmany ways we all um differed in
terms of who was the colonialpower.
But in many ways, this thisproject, colonial
respectability, worked in asense to, as you outlined for
us, define cleanliness, to findum who was of value to make
(13:29):
standards on who could get jobs,right?
What you had to look like in theworkplace to even get a job to
even be giving an interview inmany ways.
Um but there are also differentaspects of this.
I think I'd be remiss if wedidn't talk about the Coral
Gardens Massacre, for instance,in 1963 in Jamaica, in which
it's a longer story that I maybefor the sake of our conversation
(13:51):
won't get into, but um therewere disagreements between the
police and Rastas in MontegoBay, um, or near the Montego Bay
area in Jamaica.
Rastas are scapegoated for theincident.
And at the time, AlexanderBustamante is telling you know
police to haul in all theRastas, dead or alive.
And in many ways, part of thatsort of scapegoating, part of
(14:14):
that social control system wasalso giving police authorities
the right to cut Rasta's hair,um, cut their dreads, right?
And I think to talk about wherethese standards come from and
how they've emanated um andevolved over time, that's one
(14:34):
for me that I think it's not theonly one, certainly, of course.
Um, but if anybody knowsanything about Rastafari and the
um, I don't even think, youknow, to say love of their hair
is enough of a word.
And we can talk about our ownexperiences as well.
Um, but that for me is, youknow, it's a it's a sacrament in
(14:54):
many ways.
And to allow police to do thisis sacrilegious, right?
Um, and so that's a moment forme where I think is very clear
that we hold that in terms ofthis conversation and talk about
it in tandem.
Um, but there are so manyothers, I think, in a lot of
ways, when we talk about blackpower in the Caribbean in the
70s and 80s, hair doesn'talways, you know, get uplifted
(15:18):
in this conversation, but in thesame way, right?
Um, that as people were sort ofadvocating for changes and
evolution in our post-colonialworld, hair becomes very part of
that.
It's a very integral sign of howpeople were campaigning for
improved rights um andempowerment and access to
anything, to to work um to theseschools, hair becomes part of
(15:42):
that.
And so there are so manydifferent, I think, angles to
this conversation and many waysthat we could take this
conversation, but I definitelywanted us to sort of underscore
those very important moments forus in the Caribbean region.
SPEAKER_01 (15:55):
Yes, and one of the things I really like your
discussion and what you weretrying to speak to that
Victorian is important tounderstand these colonial
projects are also shaped bycontext from which they emerged.
There were forms of social classrepudiations that happened in
Europe against people who werenot aligned with these beauty
(16:18):
ideals.
The difference is that thatfunction on the level of social
class and exclusion.
In the case of places like theCaribbean or Latin America or in
Africa or in Asia, they thoughtit was blended with racism.
So you were innately inhuman orsubhuman.
That is the difference in oursituation.
(16:40):
And with the Coral Gardensmassacre of 1963 in Montigo B.
Some people think of it as badFriday.
What this moment taught me ishow in the independence era of
the post-colonial state, westill struggle to recognize the
rights of groups in oursocieties.
It's as if we missed the pointof independence, not only as
(17:03):
freedoms and political texts bythe constitution, but our total
investment in a project thatrecognizes, affirms, and
respects the humanity of ourpeople and the environments of
our spaces.
But let's be clear, in 2017there was an apology by the
(17:23):
Jamaican state, and that bringsme to a lot of my work.
What does repair and reparationslook like in the post-colony?
Our freedoms being fought forwon and compromised in the
period of independence.
One of the less studied regionsin the Anglo-Caribbean is the
(17:44):
Eastern Caribbean, in terms ofthe vibrancy of its Rastafari
movement.
We have rastafari who were putin jails for Myronic possession,
killed in unclear and uncannycircumstances without serious
justice, and many individualstudents protesting the
domination of colonial schoolrules against their individual
(18:05):
expression.
How do we reckon with thesehistories and move forward?
So the trauma that we carry fromcolonialism was not our fault,
but the independence of thoughtand action, sovereignty of the
imagination, and creativity innation building and healing are
all our responsibilities.
(18:26):
Caribbean society was a greatdebt to Rastafari, a movement
seen as ground-up, proper,imaginative, prophetic,
liberatory movement, which movedfrom Jamaica and captured the
world's imagination.
I walked through Helsinki andrandom people shout out
Rastafari, Bruce Out in Mali'sredemption song.
(18:47):
Little children grab my ear inVenezuela and so on.
Of course, these engagements canbe problematic around race,
gender, and sexuality, butthere's also a deep respect for
it around the world, whichconnects me to many movements,
struggles, and peoples resistingcolonial, capitalist,
patriarchal, Babylonian regimes.
SPEAKER_00 (19:09):
I think in that sense, right, I also want us to
talk about the gendered aspectof this coloniality of grooming.
And I think maybe in a large wayyou can speak to it from your
work specifically in terms ofyour work in politics, that
there is a distinction, right?
Between you can say boys andgirls, you can say women and men
(19:33):
in the workplace, um, but howfemininity and masculinity have
been impacted by these sort of,you know, this coloniality of
grooming and and hair, and howhave these sort of policies
reinforced gendered expectationsin the region, even as well.
SPEAKER_01 (19:50):
Yeah, well, if I may, you have to give me the
license to speak about aCaribbean reality that might
scare some of your listeners,yeah, Alex.
Some people really don't knowwhat go on in these islands.
It it seems strange to know thatthese regimes continue with the
level of gusto that they have.
(20:13):
It's so intense to everydaylife.
So while there are specifickinds of discrimination against
boys of African descent who growhere, especially dreadlocks,
considering their exclusion fromnational security service, some
jobs in the financial sector andhospitality sectors and so on,
young men have also been reallythreatened with the projections
(20:36):
of being seen as a failure.
And one of the interestingconversations that we could look
at or cultural artifacts wouldbe the Calypsonian gypsy song
Little Black Boy, and it bringstogether a lot of the what I
call those kind of anti-blackboyisms, rife in our society.
He sings little black boy, go toschool and learn, little black
(20:59):
boy, show some concern, littleblack boy.
Education is the key, so get offthe street and out of poverty.
So there's that anti-blackboyism that could exist in our
society, and for a time, a lotof blows, licks, and lashes,
floggings that happen to boyswho were seen as sweaty and all
(21:20):
relief.
But yeah, there's a genderparanoia when it comes to
grooming and girls that we can'tignore.
Black, brown, white Caribbeangirls are disciplined from this
transition of girl to a lady,and we literally deploy the term
that is unbecoming.
(21:42):
There are school rule books thatforbid girls from even eating in
public in the Caribbean.
That is seen as unbecoming.
And then we act surprised whenwe eat doubles in Trinidad and
Guyana and see that it is stilla masculinized space where most
women eat privately in a corneroutside of the crowd, or they
eat in a small group of women,or they really prefer to eat
(22:05):
doubles to go, but just to putit in a bag, or have it in their
vehicle and get in and out ofthe car when they buy a double.
We literally have genderpatterns to eat in street food
in the street.
Girls are training to docilityand respectability.
So, yes, there's a flair rightnow with Jamaican students and
edges, but there's so muchpolicing on girls' hairstyles,
(22:28):
jewelry, speech, expressions,policing of noise.
If girls could laugh out loud,so many girls cover their mouths
when they laugh because of whatschools did to them, policing of
mobility, how they move in andout of school premises.
What do we really gain fromthis?
So, a lot of these actions bringme to a deeper understanding of
(22:51):
the continuities of thesefeatures in Caribbean life and
Olive Senior's Colonial GirlsSchool, that poem, um, which was
written before I was born,before you were born, Alex, and
she writes very clearly borrowedimages, will our skins pale,
muffled our laughter, loweredour voices, let out our hymns,
(23:17):
de-kinked our hair, denied oursex in gym tunics and bloomers,
harnessed our voices tomadrigals and genteel ears,
yoked our minds to declension inLatin and the language of
Shakespeare told us nothingabout ourselves.
(23:39):
There was nothing at all.
How those pale northern eyes andaristocratic whispers once
erased us, how our loudness, ourlaughter debased us.
There was nothing left ofourselves, nothing about us at
all.
So I'm being clear, I wanthealthy, ethical, caring,
(24:01):
critical thinking,team-oriented, and knowledgeable
workers and citizens.
All our environment should beclean and sanitary.
People can work to be on time,understand the value of
reasonable, fair, and rationalrules for systems we
collectively contribute to andsustain.
But it's back canal andarbitrary policing of bodies,
(24:24):
adoption of foreign beautyregimes, and an uncritical take
of what we do in development.
Things like weak architecturalplanning and air-conditioned
infrastructures which makeCaribbean workers head to office
with scarves, bands on peoplewearing comfortable sandals and
public buildings and clubs,which really affect mature
(24:46):
citizens, elderly citizens, andstigmatization of people in
sleeveless tops and short pants.
We have to do some work ongetting over it.
SPEAKER_00 (24:56):
I was also going to bring up that poem in a lot of
ways to sort of mark the changesor the lack thereof in a lot of
ways, because I think some ofthe parts of that poem
particularly really range truetoday.
I think you had brought up thepolicy changes earlier, and I
think that sort of, if I'm notmistaken, went with the Trinity
(25:16):
College um graduation incidentin Trinidad, in which some boys
are trying to wear um braids orcane rows, cornrows, um, what
may have you, to theirgraduation and were barred from
attending.
I think that also brings tolight the Kensington primary
school case in Jamaica, um,which went through several court
(25:39):
sort of situations to sort ofeventually, you know, rule that
this child who had locks wasable to go to the school.
The moral of the story is theywere trying to bar the child
from going to the school becauseof her locks.
Um, and it was ruled that, youknow, that wasn't a suitable
reason to bar the child.
There's nothing in terms of thepolicies on how children had to
(26:01):
appear in this school, that thatwas sort of a part of that.
But I definitely want us tospeak to a point that you have
brought up that it's more thanjust, oh, you know, your hair is
unkempt, quote unquote.
And, you know, how this affectsthe person, it affects how they
move in the world.
Um, it also affects access in alot of ways.
(26:22):
If your school has deemed thatyour hair isn't appropriate, um,
now you're missing a day ofclass, right?
Um, now you have to go home, youhave to wait how many days, and
you know, I don't believe in thesort of, oh, it's the child's
fault or oh, it's the parents'fault, because there I think are
many complications, you know, tosort of place the blame in that
(26:43):
way.
But I I'm really particularlykeen on this conversation of,
you know, education and how muchschool can be missed as a result
of this, right?
Um, where are we sort of drawingthe line between what is
acceptable and like studentsneed to learn?
And I think the part of methat's very striking is
(27:04):
oftentimes students are when Isee videos that go viral, people
are like, yo, I want to be atschool.
I want to be in my socialstudies class or whatever it is
today, I want to be in myEnglish class and they're
sending me home.
Um, and so that is somethingthat I also want us to unpack a
little bit because it impactslearning, it impacts, as you
noted, you know, how we evolveas citizens um and place our
(27:26):
sort of part in the world andeven how and when people choose
to sort of reclaim this autonomyover their hair, their bodies,
etc.
SPEAKER_01 (27:36):
Uh thank you, Alex.
And shout out to TrinityCollege, my brother's school in
the US.
And um, but that is directlyrelated to my reasoning.
My first public activism was onchallenging hair codes on school
grooming policy.
In sixth form, I was punishedand on the receiving end of a
(27:58):
lot of prejudice by faculty andmy teachers because of my
decision to affirm my culturalheritage and grow my hair.
In fact, um there was interestby a number of teachers on
withdrawing my participation inthe national youth parliament in
Trinidad because they feltsymbolically that would have
(28:23):
been an open defiance of theschool's rules.
So I did a petition, I canvassedin corridors, I designed a hear
me out campaign, we plasteredthe picture of Boondocks Huey
Freeman on notice boards, and myschool principal ripped up the
(28:44):
petition in front of my face,man.
Oh no, we got Miss Joan Mason.
She gave me my first lesson inpower.
That paper not moving her hand.
I was very clear on the powerdynamics.
Um, but my consciousness wasexpanding.
And at that time, I read theedited collection, The Black
(29:07):
Power Revolution 1970, aretrospective, edited by Selvin
Ryan and Time Moon Stewart.
Now, anybody who knows thatbook, that's really a book of
conference proceedings from uhkind of 20-year retrospective
conference on the 1970revolution.
I think it was out in 1990.
So that is very umtestimony-based.
(29:30):
I got a good sense of how peoplewere reckoning the afterlives of
the revolution, and uh it had aninteresting temporality.
I was asking questions of myselfin 2006, 2007.
What did that mean for me?
So it was really a firstintroduction into public
(29:52):
politics, intimatelyunderstanding the politics of
change.
And Amilka Cabral said, We arenot fighting for ID.
In people's heads.
So I had to get my hands dirtywith it.
A lot of emotions, a sense ofloss for a 17-year-old.
But it was part of my politicalformation.
(30:13):
And the principal who enforcedmany of those rules became my
greatest supporter in life.
A mother-like figure, Mrs.
Joan Mason.
She's a special, so with aspecial contribution to the
educational landscape of Trinaand Tobago.
And if I may, I would just liketo read a poem to honor what she
(30:40):
has done for many.
The lessons she learned with myintervention and the lessons I
would have learned with hers.
And a lesson in compassion.
And also to honor my mother.
I wrote a poem at that time inmy mother's backyard.
For Linda Claudia the Foo andMrs.
Joan Mason.
(31:02):
She was a cocoa brown skin girlfrom a derelict village, Four
Road Stamina.
She bathed in barrel water, ateblue food, ate what she grew,
wore her best dress, straws,shoes.
She was poor, her family knew.
Children were blessings, notexpenses.
Fourth daughter of TapiaHousewife, Coco Pile Creation,
(31:24):
Damned by colonization, herhair.
My mother's mother that iscurled like wind spending around
bamboo shoots, carrying thewhispers of Dwens and Papa Bar.
I imagine my mother in tears.
My grandmother with her rat tailcomb ordering the dense forest
of her daughter's hair.
Years later, never would shehave known she would be tugging
(31:46):
the hair of her son.
In the patio at the back of thehouse, my mother, that is.
As a child, they called me wild,uncivilized.
For my mother, I was root.
Root in our backyard.
Root in the bush.
Root in history.
At times she requested, cut yourhair, son, cut your hair.
(32:10):
On my way to school, cut yourhair, son, cut your hair.
But I admire your power to fightfor what you believe in your
head hard, just like yourfather's.
So the cases of Trinity CollegeMocha and Trinante Bago and
Kensington Primary School inJamaica are major new stories.
(32:31):
But this is something happeningin every Caribbean school,
parish, and jurisdiction.
And I have communication frompeople in Belize and Barbados
who are reaching out to me onthis matter.
I've met with comrades in St.
Lucia who are addressing thisissue decades ago, before you
and I were born.
So our politics need to match aliberation project much more
(32:53):
than the kind of competition andmanagement models that dominate
our systems at this time.
And I would really want to holdon to the words of George Laman,
who said by politics, I don'tmean the party, the specific
ideology or the professionalpolitician.
Politics for me includes theteacher, technician, and poet.
Politics is a collectiveenterprise by people who have
(33:15):
been given the opportunity forthe first time to build a
society the way they want tobuild it.
SPEAKER_00 (33:23):
Thank you for sharing not only your poem, um,
but also I think this idea ofchange and evolution as it goes.
I feel like in parts of ourconversation, we've been like,
you know, we haven't changedenough, which is true.
Um, but there have beenincremental changes, right?
I think even for me, um,although this it's from a
(33:43):
different perspective in asense, because I went to school
in the US, so I didn't have thatsame, the same experiences of
the some of the cases andstudents were talking about in
the region.
Um, but my family's response tome locking my hair was very was
very much so why?
And I don't think this is a goodidea, and maybe she's just going
(34:04):
through a phase um and all thesethings, and now we are almost a
decade later, and people havebeen like, you know, say and
wanting to know who does my hairbecause if when they're going
home, they think they want to,and so I will say that you know,
it might not necessarily be onthe scale um of you know the
(34:24):
schools and um some of theconversations that we've been
having today, but I havedefinitely seen into more
intimate changes and evolutions.
Um, you know, people have saidthings to me a decade ago that
they probably don't rememberthat naturally I would not
forget.
Um, but the things havedefinitely spun around and
they've you know changed andevolved.
(34:46):
And I think that's also um inlarge way credited to social
media in some ways, but alsothis sort of more acceptance of
natural hair from a globalperspective, I will say.
There is a current act inCalifornia, it's the Crown Act
um of California, which hasprohibited discrimination um
(35:07):
based on hair texture andprotective styling associated
with race and national origin.
And so, as um our listenersmight imagine, was really
heralded by black women who wereum, you know, being told that
their hair wasn't acceptable,whether that was, you know,
their own natural hair, wigs,um, leaves, protective styles,
(35:27):
etc.
I bring that up just to sort ofsay that, you know, there are
some changes, and I think insome ways, things that we can
learn from one another as adiaspora are very important.
And I would love to see umsomething like that sort of
replicated, you know, in a in aCaribbean way for us to to sort
of break down some of thesebarriers.
(35:48):
My listeners know that this isone of my favorite questions.
You have brought several to thefore already because you you
brought the colonial girls poem,you brought little black boy,
but I didn't know if you had anyother favorite instances of how
you know hair abundance andcelebration shows up in the
Caribbean, um, in terms of youknow how how we feel about our
(36:12):
hair.
SPEAKER_01 (36:13):
Yeah, I may have to betray a question.
SPEAKER_00 (36:17):
That sounds like you have a whole list.
SPEAKER_01 (36:19):
I have, but I want to give a warning.
I want to give a warning.
I have to cite the great 20thcentury philosopher of the
African Atlantic philosophicaltraditions, Robert Nestorley,
known as Bob Martin.
SPEAKER_00 (36:38):
I didn't know where you were going with this, but
yes, Kendra.
SPEAKER_02 (36:41):
He says, You're running and you're running and
you're running away, you'rerunning and the running and the
running away, you're running andyou're running and you're
running away, you're running andyou're running, but you can't
run away from yourself, can'trun away from yourself, can't
run away from yourself, can'trun away from yourself, can run
(37:06):
away from yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (37:07):
I don't know much times, Bob has to tell you you
cannot run away from yourself,and I think that song, poem,
prophetic warning, custodianshipfor Caribbean societies allows
us to protect what we are doinghere on this nation-building
(37:29):
project.
I would also say we could lookat Colin Robinson's collection
of poems.
You have your father hard head,it's published in 2016, and he
brings about a criticalmasculinity's black personhood,
family conflicts, violence, andsexuality.
And then, third, this is reallya shout-out.
(37:51):
I want to hail out theincreasingly several young women
educators in secondary schools,African and Indian in the
Caribbean, have been hostingnatural hair days.
Shout out to them for this quietact of institutional resistance
and pick up the principals andthe deems who endorse this
(38:13):
proposal coming from these youngteachers.
I see your videos online, peoplelook beautiful, good things.
My secondary school has sincechanged their approach to boys
growing hair as well.
And I see their efforts to havewhat we call ethnic wear days
where children dress in saris,dashikis, indigenous and chinese
clothing.
(38:33):
So big up Bishop and C TrinityCollege and China to be good
too.
SPEAKER_00 (38:38):
Thank you.
I think I'm glad you betrayedthe question a little.
As much as I'm always keen on usupholding, you know, how this
work shows up in our popularculture, there is also so much
work happening on the ground.
So thank you for upholding, youknow, these changes and ways
that these things are evolvingin schools.
Um, my last question, Idefinitely want us to end on, is
(39:00):
that given sort of you know howthings go viral now and how
things are changing, uh, what doyou hope our listeners take away
from the historical andcontemporary significance of our
hair and the coloniality of whowe are in Caribbean societies
today?
SPEAKER_01 (39:21):
I'm talking to every student who's discerning.
I'm talking to every parent,every uncle, every tanti, every
Aji, every Aja, everybody in theCaribbean.
I'm talking to scholars whostudy our field and region,
(39:43):
understand the Caribbean presentas much as you can.
I want people to beethnographically present in
Caribbean society and space.
We have passionate conversationsabout youth and discipline, but
we could also have passionateconversations about personal and
(40:04):
collective freedoms, humanrights, dignity, a culturally
grounded way of life, systems,and nation building.
How shall I live?
How shall I govern?
And we could pursue thesequestions beginning with
ourselves, reckoning with ourhistories and imagining
(40:24):
sovereign futures.
We also have the right tobeauty, beauty in our eyes and
self-definition.
We must be beautiful on ourtones, and we could show the
world that.
SPEAKER_00 (40:37):
That's a beautiful note to end on.
I thank you, my friend, forjoining me for this episode.
Uh I hope our listeners walkedaway with as much as I did
because I think in a lot ofways, you know, the conversation
as we we've uh highlighted ismultifaceted, um, it is a bit
complicated.
It's also nuanced depending onwhere we are in the region,
(40:59):
right?
And the many things that go withthat.
But it's one that I think wasreally called for, you know, for
me when I saw some of thosestuff going viral of late.
But it's something that I wouldlike to see not, you know, be be
such a question, be be such anissue recurringly.
I would like to see our studentsin school.
(41:22):
I would like to see, you know,people not feeling like they are
barred from getting jobs forwhatever reason because of how
they look.
I would like to see it also notbe tokenized, right?
Where if you are a performerworking at a resort, you might
can have locks because you'redoing the pseudo bob Marley
thing.
(41:43):
But if you're behind the desk orwhatever, these are not.
So all of these things to say, Ithink, as you put it very well,
love ourselves um and all ourdualities and all of our beauty.
And so, with that, as I said,thank you for joining me for
this episode.
It is a long time coming, andMiss Smotley have your oath
(42:05):
because a long time we could dothis, but you know, nothing to
do before it's time.
So long time we're still sothank you for joining me for
this episode to our listeners.
Um, I will link everything thatwe discussed on the um strictly
fact syllabus, as you know.
And till next time, look a more.
If you have any thoughts, um, ifyou want to connect with any of
(42:28):
us, be sure to send me a DM andI will, you know, we can talk
and take it from there.
But till next time, look them.
Thanks for tuning in to StrictlyFacts.
Visit strictlyfactspodcast.comfor more information from each
episode.
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