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It’s World Afro Day, And Australia Is Celebrating. Here’s How To Support It.
Extreme, unacceptable, unpresentable.
These are words African Australian students still hear to describe their natural hair.
A 2019 study by the UK’s World Afro Day found that one in six students with Afro hair said they had a bad experience in school as a result of their hair. When it came to adults reminiscing on their school days, 68% said they’d preferred to have straight Caucasian or Asian hair when they were children.
For many Black people, altering their appearance to fit white expectations is a matter of instinct. In many cases, the trauma of having to change the way they look to meet arbitrary white standards of what is presentable is something that starts with the school dress code.
Living with that history takes serious emotional labour ― something Sydney-based recording artist JamarzOnMarz (real name James Emmanuel) knows all about.
While attending his rural New South Wales private school, Emmanuel could not embrace his Afro and its corresponding protective styles without the school outlawing it as “extreme.”
“My school years were spent being coerced into shaving my head,” he wrote for HuffPost Australia.
“I realise they made it extremely hard for students of the African diaspora to embrace their identities.”
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To celebrate World Afro Day, Emmanuel has launched the #ProtectBlackStudents initiative with the hope of ending Afro hair discrimination in Australian schools.
World Afro Day (WAD) is a global day of change, education and celebration of Afro hair, culture and identity founded by Michelle DeLeon in London 2017 and...
