Fugitivus Discussion Forum

(I'm not sure if this would more appropriately go here or in Serious>Other. Mods, please move it if I've guessed wrong.)

I have a friend* who likes to touch her friends' hair. She's respectful about it; she makes a point of asking first, and while I've never heard of her having been told no, she has made it clear that she'd respect that.

She's currently living in a house with several other people, with new people moving in or coming to visit on a regular basis. She has permission to touch the hair of the people who live there now, but is worried about what will happen if an african-american person moves in, since it seems to be something of an, um, touchy subject. As she puts it:


There's also the added issue that even if she tries to avoid the topic, the other people she lives with have been known to ask her why she's not interested in touching a new person's hair in front of that person, so having an answer to that that's not offensive would be useful.

She's lurked on a few race blogs, but all the advice she's found has been based on the assumption that people don't normally go around touching each others' hair. She hasn't asked anywhere for fear of coming across as a troll and getting yelled at.

Advice?

* No, this isn't a euphemism for 'I don't want to admit to this'.

IF such a situation were to occur, I'd say your friend should very conspicuously pet all of her other roommates, and then say something like "oh, it's just this quirk of mine. I pet the hair of anybody I like." and THEN, in THAT context, ask if she can touch the black person's hair, and stress that a "no" will be respected. Stopping what is, for her, an affectionate behavior toward her roommates is not going to help, and may in fact hurt the people who are used to such behavior.

I agree with Karalyn here. Since your friend is obviously able to communicate her respect for the hair-owner's decision re. her petting, I think the context of the question moves it out of 'oooh, exotic black-people hair' and all the things that entails and into 'this is a behaviour I engage in with everyone, but if you don't like it, that's cool.' Props to your friend for having the sensitivity to be worried about it, though - I think it creates a situation in which she can ask the question in a personal context, while respecting the wider spectrum of issues.