Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington | When a joke is more than a joke and a slap is more than a slap

MILLIONS AROUND the world watched in disbelief as mega movie star and rapper Will Smith slapped actor and comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars on March 27. Will Smith’s actions were inexcusable, but the entire incident is loaded with undercurrents.

Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett’s hair. Like many people, I had no idea that she has been struggling with alopecia ( Alopecia areata), a medical condition that causes hair loss. Rock more than many knows the deep relationship black women have with their hair. In 2009 he produced the movie Good Hair that examined how black women for generations have viewed their hair.

In the Jamaican community, we are quite familiar with ‘good hair’ and ‘bad hair’ and that the texture of a person’s hair has been weaponised against them. I don’t have to recount the many derogatory terms for hair deemed ‘bad hair’ as I am sure your own memory will take you there. Depending on which generation you belong to, you will view the stratospheric rise of so-called ‘false hair’ quite differently. The hair industry both in Jamaica and the United States is a huge business in communities of people of African descent. Black women spend significantly more money on their hair than women of other colours and races. It is a woman’s right to wear her hair however she wishes.

Who alive in the 1970s can forget when ‘brown-skinned’ Michael Manley married ‘black-skinned’ Beverley Anderson who, of all things, had the audacity to wear her hair natural in an Afro? The proverbial ‘pearl clutching’ is etched in my memory and I was a pre-teen in 1972.

As Jamaicans migrated to America where we live among a majority white population, the issue of our hair became even more complicated. We live, go to school and work with white people who do not understand the relationship a black woman has with her hair or black hair, period. Our hair is unique to us, and we are often made to feel unprofessional when we wear our hair in its natural form or supplement it with extensions. It continues in 2021 to be a concern for young black women, especially as they move from college to the workplace.

We are often asked uncomfortable questions about our hair texture, how we groom our hair – and the most repulsive is, “can I touch your hair”? Yes, our hair is curly, kinky, coarse, coiled and comes in all different textures, but no matter how we wear our hair – it is our crown. And NO! You cannot touch my hair.

In America and sadly in Jamaica of late, a black woman wearing her hair in its natural state is sometimes frowned upon. Twice in my life I have cut my hair off and went natural. The first time I was 16 years old in the ‘70s, Miriam Makeba was popular and so was her hairstyle. I went to Jones Barber Shop on East Queen Street in downtown Kingston with my older cousin and shaved my head. My father all but disowned me. Again in 2015, I shaved my head and stopped using chemicals to straighten my hair. While I have grown back the length of my hair, I continue to wear it natural. In 1970s Jamaica the memory of ‘cream’ relaxing our hair is unforgettable.

‘NOT PROFESSIONAL’

People remarked to me and to other black women who wear their hair natural that it is not “professional” and women and girls in America have been sent home from jobs and school because of their hair. This ban extended to the US Military and also includes black men who grow their hair and wear locks.

Thankfully, the US Congress just passed the CROWN Act that would ban discrimination based on a person’s hair, and this extends to men as well. It now must pass the US Senate before it can become law. At this moment in time when America saw Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson with natural hair on the national stage going through the rigours of a US Senate confirmation for the highest Court in America with substance and grace, it reaffirms that your hair has nothing to do with your competence. How she was disrespected is for another column.

Rock knows about the relationship between black women and their hair because his then three-year-old daughter asked him about her “bad hair” and it prompted him to produce the Good Hair movie in 2009. That he would make a joke about Jada Pinkett’s hair was tone deaf and in bad taste regardless of whether he knew she has alopecia. He knows that black women have a long history of being made to feel “less than” because of their hair. Our hair has been policed since slavery and continues. If he doesn’t know that black women struggle with intersectionality of race and gender and that hair is a major part of this struggle as they try to belong in corporate America, then he needs an education.

However, Smith’s reaction to walk on stage during a live television show and slap Rock in the face was also tone deaf and downright disrespectful. It is unfathomable to me that Smith thought that his was an acceptable reaction to anything that Chris Rock said to Jada. Will has all the right to be offended but to physically hit someone in public displays a level of arrogance that could only come from pop star status – notwithstanding his deeper demons.

Smith has been doing the television circuit to promote his memoir released in November, 2021. In those interviews Smith talks about his troubled childhood watching his father abusing his mother and the guilt that he has lived with because he didn’t protect her – despite being a child. It is clear from his own words during those interviews that his childhood haunts him, and to me he was triggered by Rock’s tasteless joke into thinking that he needed to protect his wife . But in no way can protecting your wife when she is not in imminent physical danger excuse smacking a man because he made a bad joke – that was more than a joke.

Black people in America are stereotyped in the most negative of ways that affects us all. I often wonder if when a white person is disgraced if the race feels the collective shame in the same way that black people often do when one of us falls out of line? Again, a topic for another column.

Smith’s behaviour reeked of unresolved internal conflict, arrogance, recklessness, and disrespect. After partying Sunday night away, Monday he issued an apology to Rock, but his behaviour was so egregious that he needs to suffer some punishment. The Academy should not have allowed him to remain seated and to take the stage to accept his Oscar. They now have to find a suitable reprimand.

Rock needs to issue an apology to Pinkett and black women in general for the insensitivity and the cruelty of the subject of his joke – because he knows better.

Dahlia A. Walker-Huntington is a Jamaican-American attorney who practises immigration law in the United States of America; and family, criminal and international law in Florida. She is a diversity and inclusion consultant, mediator and former special magistrate and hearing officer in Broward County, Florida. Email feedback to: info@walkerhuntington.com.