On Dreads, Myself, & Ronon
Note: I'm not going to talk too historically here, because the best person to do so would be someone who's had dreads for going on twenty or twenty five years and who was part of the community in the Caribbean.
I grew up with dreadlocks. My father had dreadlocks when he was at University. My mother ending up studying post-graduate at Mona. Growing up I was surrounded by Rastas, friends of my father's, and the knowledge of what it meant.
In other words, for me, growing dreads was more than a fashion statement and more even than a surface Pro-Africa, Pro-Blackness ethnic statement. It had a heavy weight. It meant something. People with Native American history might tell someone they don't take a Sun Dance Ceremony or Sweat Lodge or na'ii'ees lightly. When they do, some people - not all but some - understand why.
I grew up with a Rasta community down the river from where my family washed their clothes. They lived in the jungle, down a little path. And I often saw mothers with their children coming to wash their own clothes. I saw for myself the reactions of my grandmother and other members of the family. Learning about the persecution in school was nothing compared to seeing relatives hiss at a little girl just like me, who was holding her mother's hand tightly, both their heads clothed in dreads.
In my family any mention of dreads brought up this complicated mixture of fear, otherness, and random hair issues. There wasn't quite the complicated 'good hair / bad hair' that I've observed in America. Though there was some of that too. But it was the sense of being marked.
Some people wouldn't hire a Rasta and if you had dreads, people were going to assume you were a Rasta. They were going to assume you lived in an intentional community somewhere in the bush, where access to water was from a stream and where everyone acted primal. Primal, rather than ecologically focused or any of the things you hear about whites who go off into the woods here in America, and form a community that involves communal eating areas and eco-pure gardens and waste recycling and urine as tree fodder.
I'm not sure why my father cut off his dreads. I'm not even sure when. Though I have a suspicion it was the same time he shaved off his beard. And I do remember running away from him and not wanting him near me and thinking he was a stranger because that man was not my Daddy. I suspect, however, his cutting of his dreads had something to do with my mother, since my father kept his beard for years, even when we couldn't see each other - just so I might recognize him when we did.
And as I think about his personality, as I finally got to know him in my teens, I don't see much that's too far away from what he likely picked up from Rastafarism. My father wasn't - isn't for money. He's for people. He greets everyone and everyone greets him; beggars, prostitutes, street vendors, and judges. He takes cases that need taking. He accepts home cooked meals and produce and poultry in lei of monetary fees if that's all his clients have to give.
I think now that if my father had kept his dreads, his colleagues and family would have understood him much better. I think his ex-girlfriend would definitely have known what she got into. A peaceful man who believes in one love and who wasn't ever going to have any kind of cut throat ambition or a need to acquire material goods. Remembering him as a Rasta gives insight into a lot of what he's done in his life.
But once again I run into the commitment, the spirituality of it, tied into a sense of being and self worth that I can't quite explain. It's about Pro-Africanism. It's about 'We Are A People Dispersed'. It's about Black Power and a Black Nation and the Tribes of Israel. It's about G-d. It's about 'I Will Not Be Broken And Turned Into Something Else'. It's about 'I WILL NOT BE A SLAVE'. If that's too difficult for you to process, I suppose you could think of it as far, far, far less flashy and public reminisce of when Prince had 'Slave' on his face or when he was 'The Artist Formerly Known As...' But that example is incredibly public compared to the inner searching and peace concepts I grew up with.
Warrior for Peace. Warrior just by dreading your hair. A civil disobedience combined with honoring Jah's word. People were arrested! People were jailed, just for having dreads. They were harassed, their livestock killed, they and their children beaten on the street....
Ronon is not less complicated a character of color because he has dreads. They don't make him easily exotic or the perfect object of obsession for another char; not to fans of color, not to fans with ties to the Caribbean and certainly not to me.
From a fannish pov, I've found myself wanting to tell people; Have you considered that 7 yrs on the run meant Ronon got his locks through necessity of survival? Have you considered that there's a weight of history and culture to them? That they might now symbolize not bowing to the Wraith, because Ronon's become a kind of Freedom Fighter? Have you heard of the Mau Mau? Do you know a damn thing about Colonialism?
In a show where one civilization comes upon others, declares some of the new peoples savages, tries to change them at a fundamental level, even going so far as to put them in camps - Are there white fans living in New Mexico and Texas and Utah and I'm not even sure where else, who can't think/remember history lessons of the boarding schools for Native Americans?
Sure NA's aren't sucking the life's blood out of white folk. But they were depicted as savage brutes who disdained European civilized culture and would scalp a white person as soon as look at them. Native American's were depicted as painted death.
But Ronon is supposedly one of the good guys, And NA fans may not be pointing out the obvious to white fans. Just as some others may not be pointing out Colonialism and how the Athosians are now dependent on Atlantis for access to a Gate. But I'm going to point something out now. When you depict a man with dreads as animalistic, savage, growling, grunting (these last two not as ways to speak but as non verbal communication) - you're being ignorant in ways I can't begin to describe. But on a scale from 1-10. With 10 being a racist, unable to learn anything asshole - You're automatically at a 7.
There is a history in dreads of bucking the bonds of oppression, in being willing to die for it. In men who speak in poetry about Jah's love for all. And I don't care if Jason Mamoa's ethnic roots with dreads don't symbolize exactly the same thing - the point is the history is there. And it is more noble than you. It does not deserve mocking or fetishizing.
Again in plain speaking: You run into a socio-political, racial and religious wasps nest when you decide that what turns you on in how you're going to write about the character, is as Bodice Ripper Savage Man; gay or straight or non sexual plots. And it doesn't mean shit if the show writers do it! Someone else's ignorance is not an excuse for you to perpetuate your own.
I've been thinking long and hard about whether or not I want to keep my own dreads. They were started by accident because I couldn't afford to use precious energy (spoons) on my hair. They won't be perfectly rolled. They're fuzzy and soft and quite a few of them are flat.
It's oddly beautiful. It symbolizes a shift in my focus. I went from a whole bunch of shoulds about my appearance and who I am and what it means to be a woman. When I stopped wondering about playing up the soft curls and having to pay attention to it as some huge source of time consuming, self identity bullshit - I grew. It's not the end of me. It's not even the start of me. But there was so much 'People won't respect you if you have... People will think you're this or that. It means too much. Blah blah'
I put aside the world of appearances because what was inside me was more important. I honestly don't want to cut them off now because I want to remember that. I know half the appearances issues are from coming from an island in the Caribbean where 'looking decent' is a huge, huge pressure. You could be starving, about to faint, but you should look decent. You should look like you care about the opinions of others.
And yet I think despite the exhaustion and the stress, I had the most productive year in my life because I stopped caring about other people's opinions. I stopped letting them rule me. Maybe not 100%. But a serious amount. I've been a warrior for me.
I think I'm also old enough and aware enough to know what I'm doing, know what it means, know the commitment I'm making, know who I'm aligning myself with, know what I'm saying.
When someone who grew up in a culture where dreads come from - (A culture. Don't discount India and various holy men. Or places besides Kenya in Africa) - when I have to think about what it'd mean to have dreads -dreads not locs, dreads as in dreadful, fearful, to be persecuted- why can't fanfic writers, who a lot of the times do a lot of heavy thinking, think harder on what it might mean for a character and why 'Ronon The Noble DreadLocked Savage' is so fucked up.
Mane? Mane? Are the white characters so unintelligent they not only don't know locs but they can't find an encyclopedia? Lion of Judah? If you know who Haile Sellassie I is, you'd know better. And if you don't, you obviously don't know enough to use that phrase.
Honestly, what's wrong with locs? You don't use use 'spider silk' for the white character's hair do you?
I won't call John Sheppard a foodball loving, beer drinking, white bread eating, fast food having, military fuck up, secretly racist but nigga lusting, wanna be bad boy who gets by on luck if you won't call Ronon an ooga booga, non-verbal near pre-verbal, wild hair, warrior-wise man who'll protect the white men (and women) of the Milky Way from their own mistakes when he's not fucking deeply into their oh so pale skin.
If we both can manage that, I might become a less savage member of the FoCing Cabal and you might just drop down to a 3.
I grew up with dreadlocks. My father had dreadlocks when he was at University. My mother ending up studying post-graduate at Mona. Growing up I was surrounded by Rastas, friends of my father's, and the knowledge of what it meant.
In other words, for me, growing dreads was more than a fashion statement and more even than a surface Pro-Africa, Pro-Blackness ethnic statement. It had a heavy weight. It meant something. People with Native American history might tell someone they don't take a Sun Dance Ceremony or Sweat Lodge or na'ii'ees lightly. When they do, some people - not all but some - understand why.
I grew up with a Rasta community down the river from where my family washed their clothes. They lived in the jungle, down a little path. And I often saw mothers with their children coming to wash their own clothes. I saw for myself the reactions of my grandmother and other members of the family. Learning about the persecution in school was nothing compared to seeing relatives hiss at a little girl just like me, who was holding her mother's hand tightly, both their heads clothed in dreads.
In my family any mention of dreads brought up this complicated mixture of fear, otherness, and random hair issues. There wasn't quite the complicated 'good hair / bad hair' that I've observed in America. Though there was some of that too. But it was the sense of being marked.
Some people wouldn't hire a Rasta and if you had dreads, people were going to assume you were a Rasta. They were going to assume you lived in an intentional community somewhere in the bush, where access to water was from a stream and where everyone acted primal. Primal, rather than ecologically focused or any of the things you hear about whites who go off into the woods here in America, and form a community that involves communal eating areas and eco-pure gardens and waste recycling and urine as tree fodder.
I'm not sure why my father cut off his dreads. I'm not even sure when. Though I have a suspicion it was the same time he shaved off his beard. And I do remember running away from him and not wanting him near me and thinking he was a stranger because that man was not my Daddy. I suspect, however, his cutting of his dreads had something to do with my mother, since my father kept his beard for years, even when we couldn't see each other - just so I might recognize him when we did.
And as I think about his personality, as I finally got to know him in my teens, I don't see much that's too far away from what he likely picked up from Rastafarism. My father wasn't - isn't for money. He's for people. He greets everyone and everyone greets him; beggars, prostitutes, street vendors, and judges. He takes cases that need taking. He accepts home cooked meals and produce and poultry in lei of monetary fees if that's all his clients have to give.
I think now that if my father had kept his dreads, his colleagues and family would have understood him much better. I think his ex-girlfriend would definitely have known what she got into. A peaceful man who believes in one love and who wasn't ever going to have any kind of cut throat ambition or a need to acquire material goods. Remembering him as a Rasta gives insight into a lot of what he's done in his life.
But once again I run into the commitment, the spirituality of it, tied into a sense of being and self worth that I can't quite explain. It's about Pro-Africanism. It's about 'We Are A People Dispersed'. It's about Black Power and a Black Nation and the Tribes of Israel. It's about G-d. It's about 'I Will Not Be Broken And Turned Into Something Else'. It's about 'I WILL NOT BE A SLAVE'. If that's too difficult for you to process, I suppose you could think of it as far, far, far less flashy and public reminisce of when Prince had 'Slave' on his face or when he was 'The Artist Formerly Known As...' But that example is incredibly public compared to the inner searching and peace concepts I grew up with.
Warrior for Peace. Warrior just by dreading your hair. A civil disobedience combined with honoring Jah's word. People were arrested! People were jailed, just for having dreads. They were harassed, their livestock killed, they and their children beaten on the street....
Ronon is not less complicated a character of color because he has dreads. They don't make him easily exotic or the perfect object of obsession for another char; not to fans of color, not to fans with ties to the Caribbean and certainly not to me.
From a fannish pov, I've found myself wanting to tell people; Have you considered that 7 yrs on the run meant Ronon got his locks through necessity of survival? Have you considered that there's a weight of history and culture to them? That they might now symbolize not bowing to the Wraith, because Ronon's become a kind of Freedom Fighter? Have you heard of the Mau Mau? Do you know a damn thing about Colonialism?
In a show where one civilization comes upon others, declares some of the new peoples savages, tries to change them at a fundamental level, even going so far as to put them in camps - Are there white fans living in New Mexico and Texas and Utah and I'm not even sure where else, who can't think/remember history lessons of the boarding schools for Native Americans?
Sure NA's aren't sucking the life's blood out of white folk. But they were depicted as savage brutes who disdained European civilized culture and would scalp a white person as soon as look at them. Native American's were depicted as painted death.
But Ronon is supposedly one of the good guys, And NA fans may not be pointing out the obvious to white fans. Just as some others may not be pointing out Colonialism and how the Athosians are now dependent on Atlantis for access to a Gate. But I'm going to point something out now. When you depict a man with dreads as animalistic, savage, growling, grunting (these last two not as ways to speak but as non verbal communication) - you're being ignorant in ways I can't begin to describe. But on a scale from 1-10. With 10 being a racist, unable to learn anything asshole - You're automatically at a 7.
There is a history in dreads of bucking the bonds of oppression, in being willing to die for it. In men who speak in poetry about Jah's love for all. And I don't care if Jason Mamoa's ethnic roots with dreads don't symbolize exactly the same thing - the point is the history is there. And it is more noble than you. It does not deserve mocking or fetishizing.
Again in plain speaking: You run into a socio-political, racial and religious wasps nest when you decide that what turns you on in how you're going to write about the character, is as Bodice Ripper Savage Man; gay or straight or non sexual plots. And it doesn't mean shit if the show writers do it! Someone else's ignorance is not an excuse for you to perpetuate your own.
I've been thinking long and hard about whether or not I want to keep my own dreads. They were started by accident because I couldn't afford to use precious energy (spoons) on my hair. They won't be perfectly rolled. They're fuzzy and soft and quite a few of them are flat.
It's oddly beautiful. It symbolizes a shift in my focus. I went from a whole bunch of shoulds about my appearance and who I am and what it means to be a woman. When I stopped wondering about playing up the soft curls and having to pay attention to it as some huge source of time consuming, self identity bullshit - I grew. It's not the end of me. It's not even the start of me. But there was so much 'People won't respect you if you have... People will think you're this or that. It means too much. Blah blah'
I put aside the world of appearances because what was inside me was more important. I honestly don't want to cut them off now because I want to remember that. I know half the appearances issues are from coming from an island in the Caribbean where 'looking decent' is a huge, huge pressure. You could be starving, about to faint, but you should look decent. You should look like you care about the opinions of others.
And yet I think despite the exhaustion and the stress, I had the most productive year in my life because I stopped caring about other people's opinions. I stopped letting them rule me. Maybe not 100%. But a serious amount. I've been a warrior for me.
I think I'm also old enough and aware enough to know what I'm doing, know what it means, know the commitment I'm making, know who I'm aligning myself with, know what I'm saying.
When someone who grew up in a culture where dreads come from - (A culture. Don't discount India and various holy men. Or places besides Kenya in Africa) - when I have to think about what it'd mean to have dreads -dreads not locs, dreads as in dreadful, fearful, to be persecuted- why can't fanfic writers, who a lot of the times do a lot of heavy thinking, think harder on what it might mean for a character and why 'Ronon The Noble DreadLocked Savage' is so fucked up.
Mane? Mane? Are the white characters so unintelligent they not only don't know locs but they can't find an encyclopedia? Lion of Judah? If you know who Haile Sellassie I is, you'd know better. And if you don't, you obviously don't know enough to use that phrase.
Honestly, what's wrong with locs? You don't use use 'spider silk' for the white character's hair do you?
I won't call John Sheppard a foodball loving, beer drinking, white bread eating, fast food having, military fuck up, secretly racist but nigga lusting, wanna be bad boy who gets by on luck if you won't call Ronon an ooga booga, non-verbal near pre-verbal, wild hair, warrior-wise man who'll protect the white men (and women) of the Milky Way from their own mistakes when he's not fucking deeply into their oh so pale skin.
If we both can manage that, I might become a less savage member of the FoCing Cabal and you might just drop down to a 3.