Seventeenth-century ideas of difference – what we might today recognize as racial difference – hinged much more on Christian beliefs than on physical characteristics, with Colonial critiques of Native American hair practices relying heavily on biblical mandates. In political proclamations and religious tracts, Colonial leaders denounced Native American men’s long hair as evidence of their inherent barbarism. McMahan PhotoĮnglish colonists to North America linked hair and racial identity from the very beginning of colonization.

Photographer Edward Curtis’ portrait of Heavy Shield. (Later that year, the military amended these policies in response to such critiques.)īut before the 20th century, hair wasn’t just associated with a particular racial group it was understood to be unambiguous, biological evidence of a person’s race. military revised its grooming standards in 2014 to forbid women from wearing dreadlocks, twists and many styles of braids, many observers viewed these changes as specifically targeting Black soldiers, despite the race-neutral language of the policies. Shame unto a man with long hair!Īssociations between race and hairstyle are somewhat familiar to us today. “The very way in which the hair flows is strongly indicative of the ruling passions and inclinations, and perhaps a clever person could give a shrewd guess at the manner of a man’s or woman’s disposition by only seeing the backs of their heads.”īut more than 100 years before accounts connecting hair with personality traits became commonplace, white Americans had already been using hair as a shorthand for classifying and interpreting race. This taxonomy ended with a provocative suggestion that highlighted the deference people gave to hair: “Harsh, upright hair,” for example, signaled “a stubborn and harsh character.” Flat hair indicated “a melancholy but extremely constant character,” while auburn-haired people had “the highest capacity for enjoyment or suffering.” Those with coarse black hair had a “tendency to sensuality.” In the 1870s, multiple newspapers reprinted a lengthy taxonomy of the many temperaments hair could communicate. Meanwhile, a Kansas City medical journal argued, in 1899, that “in criminals, as a rule, the beard is scanty.” In 1863, for example, the literary magazine The Knickerbocker dedicated 13 pages to defending men who parted their hair in the middle – a style thought to indicate weakness. In hair, ‘ruling passions and inclinations’Īmericans used to believe, with surprising confidence, that hair style, color or texture could reveal a range of personal traits. It also held exceptional weight in conversations about race. Hair, many 19th-century Americans believed, could reveal qualities like courage, ambition or criminal inclinations. Instead, hair was understood to be a reliable – even scientific – method for quickly classifying a stranger. Nor was it simply a subject of ridicule, like Donald Trump’s hair – a source of endless speculation and mockery. Hair was not just a means of creative self-expression or political affiliation, as it became in the middle of the 20th century – when it could signal to others that you were a hippie, a company man or a Black nationalist.

Until the early 20th century, people across the United States believed that hair could expose the truth about the person from whose head it sprouted.

But the idea that hair can reflect someone’s character didn’t originate with Kim Jong-il. This bizarre campaign might strike a Western reader as just another idiosyncratic North Korean story.

Colonial america18th century queue hair