Oppositional respectability subscribes to the idea that the things which are stigmatized shouldn’t be, and thus we should change what people think about how we wear our hair by doing it how we want regardless.” “If we’re talking about hair, normative respectability is essentially the idea that for black boys to avoid anti-black stigma, they should avoid all items and styles associated with it, less traditional hairstyles could be one. “In my research, I break down respectability into two camps, normative and oppositional,” Crockett says. David Crockett, who studies how black families try and avoid anti-black stigma, the way black parents embrace or reject respectability politics is increasingly complicated. But, according to marketing professor Dr. That said, respectability politics inform a lot of choices made by parents disinterested or just not able - for any number of economic or personal reasons - to challenge mainstream values. Respectability politics, the tendency of a minority group to police its unique cultural practices, is not universally accepted as good practice in black communities. For better, for worse, or for dangerous, parents, barbers, and mass media are changing the way black boys understand self-presentation.Ī black child’s proximity to mainstream respectability is a kind of social barometer for many black parents. The battle over the future of black masculinity is taking place, at least in part or in microcosm, on the heads of black boys. They wear nappy afros like Donald Glover or having wild patches of dreadlocks like Basquiat. Black boys take cues from the black girls who have been dangling their feet off the cutting edge. But, with social media amplifying pop culture in a way that wasn’t possible when Singleton was a child, a more creative, visible, and to some parents, dangerous, approach to the way black males wear their hair has resurfaced in the mainstream. Given that black men have traditionally worn natural hair, a majority of this shift can be attributed to black women, two-thirds of whom wore a natural style in 2013 just one year before the sales boom. At the same time, the sale of relaxers dropped 32 percent. Between 20, profit from natural hair care products shot up 12 percent. That said, sales of different black hair products speak volumes about shifting norms. Hairstyle statistics aren’t nonexistent, but there’s not a wealth of data. “It is also distracting because they’re school-age boys.” “I won’t allow my sons to do certain things until maybe about 15 or 16, when I know they’re doing it because it’s what they want or like and aren’t just being followers to what’s popular right now,” says Singleton. However, Singleton, now 44, believes that playing it safer with their hair - avoiding dyes and sprawling asymmetrical do’s - might help his boys get ahead and he thinks encouraging self-expression isn’t worth jeopardizing that. He is aware that the days of the default bald fade are gone too. He knows his sons’ friends have haircuts inspired by musicians, athletes, and artists who aren’t really striving for subtlety. He knows that black hair has been politicized inside and outside of the black community. Singleton is not naive about what it means for him to tell his kids to keep it conservative. He believes he’s doing his sons a service. Singleton believes hair is a way his boys can “present themselves better.” He believes this matters.
A father to three sons, Singleton gives his boys simple haircuts that are sometimes at odds with their desires for more outrageous looks. But he doesn’t bring that work home with him.
He’s induced Jheri curls and sculpted high tops. Calvin Singleton has been cutting black hair in New York City for the last 32 years.
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