Remember my article on this topic from last year? Since it was so much fun, my new article on Return of Kings discusses a few more examples of People of Color appropriating other cultures—sometimes from white people, sometimes from a different set of POC, but always illustrating my point that everybody is guilty of it.

Yes, true believers, the hairstyle known as the dreadlock, often associated with the Rastafarian religious sect, where it is worn to symbolize the Lion of Judah (i.e., the holy lineage ascribed to Menelik I), did not, in fact, originate in Jamaica or any other part of the Caribbean for that matter. And it is here that I must make a clarification in that while this hairstyle was not invented by the black man, it wasn’t entirely invented by white people either, or at the very least, any group of people that folk ethnography would classify as “white”.

The earliest evidence that is known of this hairstyle comes from India, as a matter of a fact, where they are known as jaata and worn by sadhus and hermits and other devotees of Shiva. But speaking of whitey, the Minoans and other ancient Peloponnesians are known to have worn the style as well, as seen in this fresco from Santorini, Greece.

Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Persians, Israelites, and Armenians were also known to wear the style, as were certain Native American tribes. And while the kinky texture of Afro hair does indeed make the hairstyle substantially easier to form than in straight hair, the lack of combing and washing in the past made even the straight hair of white people substantially more matted. Indeed, something resembling dreadlocks will form if you just leave your hair unwashed and uncombed for a few months.

Read the rest of it here