Emma Dabiri | |
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Born | Dublin, Ireland |
Occupations |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Influences | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Black studies |
Sub-discipline | African Diaspora Studies |
Main interests |
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Emma Dabiri FRSL (born 25 March 1979) is an Irish author,academic,and broadcaster. Her debut book,Don't Touch My Hair,was published in 2019. [3] Her 2021 book,What White People Can Do Next:From Allyship to Coalition,is an International Bestseller [4] . She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023. [5]
Dabiri was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Nigerian Yoruba father. After spending her early years in Atlanta,Georgia,her family returned to Dublin when Dabiri was five years of age. [3] She says that her experience of growing up isolated and as the target of frequent racism informed her perspective (2019). [6] After leaving school,she moved to London to study African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),her academic career leading to broadcast work,including co-presenting BBC Four's Britain's Lost Masterpieces ,Channel 4 documentaries such as Is Love Racist?,and a radio show about Afrofuturism,among others. [7]
Dabiri is a frequent contributor to print and online media,including The Guardian , Irish Times ,Dublin Inquirer, Vice ,and others. [8] She has also published in academic journals. Dabiri's outspokenness on issues of race and racism has caused her to have to deal with extreme trolling and racist abuse online. She says of this that "it's just words" and the racism she grew up with fortified her to deal with it. [9] She is the author of three books:Don't Touch My Hair (2019),What White People Can Do Next:From Allyship to Coalition (2021),and Disobedient Bodies:Reclaim Your Unruly Beauty (2023).
Dabiri holds a Western Marxist's critique of capitalism,and in What White People Can Do Next,she dedicates a chapter to "Interrogate Capitalism",building upon the ideas of Herbert Marcuse,Angela Davis,and Frantz Fanon. [10] Western Marxism places greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society. Dabiri summarizes:"In fact,in many ways race and capitalism are siblings",and while "capitalism exists,racism will continue". [10]
Dabiri lives in London,where she is completing her PhD in visual sociology at Goldsmiths,University of London,while also teaching at SOAS and continuing her broadcast work. [11] [12] She is married and has two children. [6]
Dabiri has appeared on the television programmes Have I Got News For You , Portrait Artist of the Year . [13] and Question Time . [14]
In her 2019 book Don't Touch My Hair,Dabiri combines memoir with social commentary and philosophy. She moves beyond the personal to examine African hair in wider contexts,with the book travelling across geographical space and through time to take in pre-colonial Africa up to modern day Western society. Throughout she writes that African hair represents a complex visual language. [15]
Throughout the book,she explores the erasure,stigmatization and appropriation of Black hair. Dabiri uses a historical and cultural approach to investigate the global history of racism towards Black hair,while taking readers on her own personal journey of self-love and acceptance. [16]
Additionally,Dabiri analyses such topics as the criminalization of dreadlocks and the natural hair movement. [17]
The review by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff in The Guardian summed up Don't Touch My Hair by saying:"The first title of its kind,with fresh ideas and a vivid sense of purpose,Dabiri's book is groundbreaking." [18]
The Book was released in the US in 2020 under the title Twisted:The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture. [19]
TIME magazine described Dabiri's 2021 book What White People Can Do Next:From Allyship to Coalition as
"Dabiri's manifesto for radical change in a world impacted by the pandemic and the surge of attention on the Black Lives Matter movement. With essays titled 'Stop the Denial,' 'Interrogate Capitalism,' and 'Denounce the White Saviour,' Dabiri marries historical context with contemporary commentary and analysis in a direct, accessible style, referencing thinkers including Fred Moten, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde and bell hooks." [1]
In Disobedient Bodies, Dabiri explores the world of modern beauty and how it has been historically used as a tool of oppression by the patriarchal society. Drawing on philosophies like the Cartesian idea of the separation of mind and body, attributing mind to male and body to female characteristics, she makes the point that the currect political and social system is designed to keep people feeling insecure at all times. [20] In a radical and deeply personal way, she suggests ways to embrace the unruliness and disobedience of the body, and how beauty exists not as a superficial feature, but rather as a physical and spiritual harmony. [20] [21]
In a review of Disobedient Bodies, The Irish Times author Anna Carey writes: "This call to joyful disobedience is further proof that Dabiri is one of our most important and exciting thinkers and writers." [22]
Dabiri released the book as an accompaniment to the exhibition titled "The Cult of Beauty" at the Wellcome Collection in autumn 2023. [23]
Dreadlocks, also known as dreads or locs, are a hairstyle made of rope-like strands of hair. This is done by not combing the hair and allowing it to mat naturally or by twisting it manually. Over time, the hair will form tight braids or ringlets.
Black is beautiful is a cultural movement that was started in the United States in the 1960s by African Americans. It later spread beyond the United States, most prominently in the writings of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko in South Africa. Black is beautiful got its roots from the Négritude movement of the 1930s. Negritude argued for the importance of a Pan-African racial identity among people of African descent worldwide.
Kinky hair, also known as afro-textured hair, is a human hair texture prevalent in the indigenous populations of many regions with hot climates, mainly sub-Saharan Africa, some areas of Melanesia, and Australia. Each strand of this hair type grows in a repeating pattern of small contiguous kinks. These numerous kinks make kinky hair appear denser than straight, wavy, and curly hair types.
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study The Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes that internalized racism involves both "conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which a presumed superior race are consistently ranked above other races. These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.
Randa Jarrar is an American writer and translator. Her first novel, the coming-of-age story A Map of Home (2008), won her the Hopwood Award, and an Arab American Book Award. Since then she has published short stories, essays, the collection, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (2016), and the memoir, Love Is an Ex-Country (2021).
Good Hair is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Jeff Stilson and produced by Chris Rock Productions and HBO Films, starring and narrated by comedian Chris Rock. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2009, Good Hair had a limited release to theaters in the United States by Roadside Attractions on October 9, 2009, and opened across the country on October 23.
African-American hair or Black hair refers to hair types, textures, and styles that are linked to African-American culture, often drawing inspiration from African hair culture. It plays a major role in the identity and politics of Black culture in the United States and across the diaspora. African-American hair often has a kinky hairy texture, appearing tightly coiled and packed. Black hair has a complex history, culture, and cultural impact, including its relationship with racism.
Discrimination based on hair texture, also known as textureism, is a form of social injustice, where afro-textured hair or coarse hair types, and their associated hair styles, are viewed negatively, often perceived as "unprofessional", "unattractive", or "unclean". This view can lead, for example, to some school students being excluded from class.
Midaregami is a collection of tanka, written by the Japanese writer Akiko Yosano during the Meiji period in 1901. Although later celebrated for its softly feminist depictions of a woman's sexual freedom, her work suffered heavy criticism at the time of publication for subverting contemporary gender norms.
Stella Dadzie is a British educationalist, activist, writer and historian. She is best known for her involvement in the UK's Black Women's Movement, being a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the 1970s, and co-authoring with Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan in 1985 the book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain. In 2020, Verso published a new book by Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance.
"Don't Touch My Hair" is the ninth track on American singer and songwriter Solange Knowles' third studio album, A Seat at the Table. It was released by Saint Records and Columbia Records on September 30, 2016 with its music video being released the following week. It was written by Knowles and Sampha Sisay.
Little People is an animated television series for children based on the Fisher-Price toy line of the same name, produced by HIT Entertainment, and DHX Media, and broadcast on Sprout. It premiered on Sprout on March 7, 2016. 52 episodes were produced.
Munroe Bergdorf is a British model who came to public attention in August 2017 when she was employed as the first transgender model to front a L'Oréal campaign in the United Kingdom. Bergdorf attracted further public attention following an article in the Daily Mail highlighting Facebook comments that she—a mixed race trans woman of white English and black Jamaican heritage—had made about white people. These comments—which included the claim that all white people were guilty of "racial violence" and that the white race was "the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth"—generated accusations that she was racist against white people. In response to her comments, L'Oréal fired her from its campaign and Facebook removed her posts from their website, regarding them as being in contravention to its rules against hate speech. Bergdorf said she also faced online harassment, much of it of a racist and transphobic nature.
Allyship is an English-language neologism used in contemporary social justice activism to describe efforts by groups of people to advance the interests of marginalized groups both in society at large and in particular social contexts, for example universities or workplaces. The term and related behaviors are controversial, with critics alleging that allyship is an ideological, performative, and insincere notion that may ignore prior concepts of tolerance and solidarity.
Ebun Joseph Arogundade is a Nigerian-Irish lecturer, author, and consultant. She is founder and module coordinator of the first Black Studies module in Ireland at University College Dublin.
Erica-Cody Kennedy Smith is an Irish R&B singer and songwriter.
Nikki Nelms is an American hairdresser. She has worked with celebrities including Solange, Janelle Monáe, Zoë Kravitz, and Yara Shahidi. Her best known work includes the hair styling in Solange's "Don't Touch My Hair" and Janelle Monáe's hair in "Pynk". Nelms is known for using non-traditional materials and bold silhouettes in her styling.
Shirley Anne Tate is a Jamaican sociologist, scholar, researcher, educator, and author. She is known for her work in studying racism, the Black diaspora and the intersection with feminism; specifically within institutional racism, mixed race studies, and Black identity.
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American poet Louise Glück (1943–2023) who the Swedish Academy members praised "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." The winner was announced on October 8, 2020, by Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. She is the 13th Nobel laureate in Literature from the United States after 2016 laureate Bob Dylan and 1993 laureate Toni Morrison.
Tendai Moyo, also known as Varaidzo Tendai Moyo, is the Zimbabwean-born co-founder and CEO of Ruka Hair, a direct to consumer hair extension brand for Afro-Caribbean women who prefer natural hair.