LAUSR

In this article I forward an appraisal of the cultural politics of black hair and skin texture, apprehended in visual and tactile terms, in order to stimulate critical conversation on the role of the act of touch and the realm of the haptic in the propagation of knowledge about race and ethnicity. In turn, I explore how the developments in knowledge production examined below are germane to the articulation of racial and sexual power. This discussion proceeds from an analysis of current cultural interventions concerned with black hair (and their histories) to an assessment of the transformation of skin color’s significance that is taking place under a new regime of colorblind racial ideology. I focus on two examples: a performance titled “You Can Touch My Hair” and an emergent system for the classification of black hair textures, the Andre Walker system. Through these examples, I argue that hair and skin texture may come to supplant skin color as a reified property of racial difference. Accordingly, interrogating the act of touch attests to the need for a critical orientation toward quasi-scientific practices that are currently constructing knowledge about skin texture in racialized and gendered terms.