Just Us: An American Conversation

Rankine is at yet another dinner party when a woman, who is an instructor, asks what she ought to tell her Black women students who dye their hair blond. Everyone else at the table also waits for Rankine’s answer. Rankine wonders if dying their natural hair matters as much as “safeguarding […] their sense of agency and freedom” (254). The woman goes silent. Just when Rankine thinks that she wants to try to answer the question again, someone turns their gaze toward dessert.

Rankine knows that blond hair doesn’t really signify white purity, as anyone, including Black and Asian people, can adopt the hair color and still not become white. The hair color doesn’t even need to indicate a human being. She wonders if the students’ blond hair is a defiance of white supremacist beauty ideals. On the other hand, they may be playing “a zero-sum game” that makes them complicit with those standards by dyeing their hair (255). Rankine decides to ask the professor what Frantz Fanon would say about her students’ choice. The woman laughs. Is their hair coloring choice a form of “reverse appropriation with all its artificiality and performativity?” (256). Do Black women who dye their hair blond believe that this choice allows them to be seen for the first time as youthful and beautiful, even as human?