The Rag | Pop Culture

Is Justin Bieber’s Cultural Appropriation of Locs Worth Talking About?

Accountability is important but so is decentering whiteness

“Laaaaaaawd, why won’t white folks just stop with this nonsense?” asked Black people this week about Justin Biber’s hair. Photo by Kory Williams on Unsplash.

Justin Bieber’s new dreadlock hairstyle went viral amid allegations of cultural appropriation this week. This isn’t the first time he fell into some peak whiteness and, Lord knows, it probably will not be the last.

Let me spell it out ICYMI (and clearly many people have): a lot of Black and brown folks find it offensive when white people loc their hair because a) it is a style deeply rooted in our culture and b) we are still castigated for wearing the style at work, at school, and on the red carpet.

Historically, I have not been vocal about hair-related cultural appropriation. My hippie years desensitized me to the rather awful sight of white people in so-called dreadlocks, those wispy straight roots that thickened into felted, tarantula-leg-like ropes. And let’s be real, the mainstream conversation around cultural appropriation was different—well, non-existent in my social circle—back in the late ’90s and early aughts. Mostly, I was baffled at how my white friends could even get their lank locks to loc in the first place.