NaBloPoMo #11: Racism in the context of…hair?

All right. I was going to talk about Veteran’s Day and my grandfather, who flew a bomber in the South Pacific during World War II, my relative who was a drummer in the Civil War, and my uncle who was forced into retirement from his position as a colonel with the U.S. Army because the government does not appropriately value its experienced workers, even when it’s something as important as managing supply lines, but everyone is talking about that today.

So instead, I’m going to talk about how, apparently, making fun of hair is racist.

A wee bit of background: High School Musical is, by most accounts I’ve read, a really terrible Disney movie. For some reason, it has a decent Internet following. “Fandom” is the group of people interested in the same show, movie, band, or whatever; in this particular case, High School Musical. “Fanfiction” is fiction written about the show, movie, etc. In this instance, it’s about romantic relationships between two teenage boys.

I have never seen High School Musical or read much about it, or any fanfiction. So I have no idea how in character any of it is, especially as regards the jokes in question.

The big, huge to-do? Apparently, authors are including jokes about one kid’s hair. The kid is black, or half-black; I know the actor’s mother is Italian, but I don’t know about the character’s background. He looks like this:

Now, personally? I love his hair. I think it’s really cute and looks good on him. I also realize that teenage boys will tease each other about anything, even between friends, and it’s not meant to be hurtful or taken seriously. Then, I think most normal people realize that.

Not large portions of this community.

Arguments range from, on the one hand of idiocy, “Well, people make jokes about how the other kid is pale, and I don’t like it!” to, “People LOSE THEIR JOBS OVER THEIR HAIR AND THEREFORE THE FANFICTION REGARDING TEENAGERS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.” Because, you know, what happens between teenagers who mock each other (in fanfiction, no less!) clearly makes a massive impact on what happens in the real adult world.

Let’s put this in a non-race perspective for a moment.

G is losing her hearing. She’s going to eventually be totally deaf. She’s 20. Do I mock her for this? HELL YES. But if it ever, EVER influenced things at work or her ability to get a job, that would be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and utterly wrong.

Or here’s this one. I have a genetic condition that leaves me in constant pain, sometimes unable to walk without a cane, and foresee eventually needing a wheelchair, at least part of the time. G calls me crippled, I call myself crippled, and we joke about it. But again, if I was to lose my job over it, it would be completely wrong.

You see? There is a massive difference between “joking between friends” (which it looks like this is) and “affecting people’s lives outright”. The hair thing appears to be the former in this context. An example of the latter is a teacher being fired for having an afro. And yes, that is from last year.

And the thing that gets me? It looks like they’ve called his hair “poofy”, “shaggy”, etc. It doesn’t look (and again, I haven’t read, so I don’t know) like they’ve used words like “nappy” or “kinky”. Those words certainly have different connotations. When my brother-in-law calls my older niece’s hair “nappy” (she’s his stepdaughter), I want nothing more than to hit him, because that definitely has racial connotations, and not in a remotely positive way. But that’s not the same as teenage boys teasing each other. Not in the least.