Having natural hair in the Dominican Republic is is a symbol of poverty. Curly hair is often referred to as “barrio hair” translated, this means “hood hair.” In America texture discrimination exist but most people politely hide it, while in the Dominican Republic it is not uncommon for your neighbor or an acquaintance to say “fix your hair” if it is left curly. How can straight hair be a cultural symbol for a country with prominently curly hair in their genes and where did this phenomenon come from?<\/p>\n
Between 1930 – 1960’s The Dominican Republic was ruled by a dictator whose hate for anything “black” was deeply rooted in everything he did. He wanted the DR to appear more European than African. More importantly he wanted a definite difference in the way that Dominicans and Haitians looked. This mentality is still felt today but with the new generation of Millennials there is a glimmer of hope. A natural hair salon opened up in the capital. The owner decided to open when she was denied entry to a club because of her hair. She decided to open a salon who catered to women of all hair textures.\u00a0The typical Dominican hair salon is famously known for leaving even the curliest hair straight. But the new natural hair salon is a huge step in the right direction. When I told my grandmother about it she first let out a humph and in Spanish said “Whats wrong with them they need to fix that mess of a hair on their head, that style is not classy.” This is symbolic of her age and generation. The struggle to love your natural hair is not independent of an American struggle but is felt world wide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having natural hair in the Dominican Republic is is a symbol of poverty. Curly hair is often referred to as “barrio hair” translated, this means “hood hair.” In America texture discrimination exist but most people politely hide it, while in the Dominican Republic it is not uncommon for your neighbor or an acquaintance to say […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}