Self-Hatred, Jamaica’s New Law and Locs
It is not OK that the country said what it said about locs
Published in
1 min readSep 1, 2020
Locs are wonderful. Locs are beautiful. And to many, locs are evidence of the divine. So why then, did Jamaica’s Supreme Court decide this: “the Supreme Court of Jamaica ruled a seven-year-old girl’s school had the right to prevent her from attending because of her locs.”
Like. What?
As reported in ZORA, which is one of Medium’s in-house publications, here is the issue:
Everyone who has locs isn’t Rastafarian (including the seven-year-old girl), but their persecution stems from the religion. Over 90% of Jamaica’s population is Black, but the island still has many remnants of slavery and racism. The politics of hair runs deeper than aesthetics. It permeates institutions rooted in anti-Blackness and colonial ideology, affecting everyday life.
