[Applause]
let’s play a game
Mina says clap once great modern Mina
says high-five someone next to you
very good ok
Mina says touch the hair of the person
in front of you I’m serious
okay now they touch the hair of the
person next to you guys guys Mina didn’t
say that time come on you know the rules
thank you for playing just want to see
you by show of hands how many of you
just had your hair touched by someone
you’ve never met before
yeah it’s quite a lot of people and just
by show of hands how many of you were
like now I’m not touching anybody’s hair
today I’m with you guys I launched the
no you cannot touch my hair a campaign
survey in the summer of 2017
and just under half of the respondents
said they had their hair touched on a
monthly basis by people they’ve never
met before and within that 18% said it
happened once a week as you can imagine
unwanted and uninvited hair touching by
people you’ve never met before that’s
that’s my daily life about a year ago I
got exhausted with constantly saying to
people don’t touch like thanks for the
compliment but keep your hands to
yourself
and I kind of wanted a recorder to kind
of just press play but I figured that
prevention is much better than cure so I
printed these t-shirts and I started to
walk around wearing no you cannot touch
my hair and I wore them to supermarkets
I wasn’t to work into conferences I wore
them out socially but why I find is that
lots of people started asking me
questions so some people generally
didn’t know that this was a thing even
though it affects my life I was like yes
it’s a thing and some people were like
yeah I want a t-shirt that happens to me
so I want to start texting that data and
the survey was born as part of the
research for the survey I made this bit
of a social experiment Wow it has
amazing
the hardest part of that was trying to
like chase people lift up my shirt to
Cheryl’s wearing this new can’t touch my
hair a campaign t-shirt underneath at
which point they thought I was flashing
them and try and say no no it’s a social
experiment but what I did catch up with
people I asked him how it felt and most
of the people in the video said it was
weird and it was uncomfortable the
majority of our campaign survey
respondents said that it felt intrusive
if not invasive and they were very angry
and annoyed that this happened to them
one of the things that I find was that
the majority of respondents were female
so 90% in fact identified as female and
the majority of those were black women
and girls so we know that this is an
issue that affects black women and girls
more than any other race now a friend of
a friend
this white guy was saying yeah but Mena
you know I went on holiday to India for
two weeks and people were touching my
hair and lots of other women were saying
oh you know when you’re pregnant people
come up and touch your stomach and it’s
the same thing now I don’t want to take
that experience away from anybody any
form of unwanted and uninvited touching
is completely unacceptable but most
women on average only pregnant for nine
months so that type of touching will
come to an end and I’m not on vacation
on holiday and like many of the
respondents this is the country that I
was born in and it still happens some
people a very small minority said they
didn’t mind the touching and again
that’s cool but this campaign is really
targeted at the overwhelming
disproportionate number of black people
black women black girls that experience
this unwanted hair touching when I was
six years old I was asked to be Mary in
my school playing like get in the park
and the only other black kid in the
schools has to be Joseph and on the day
they gave us this white baby Jesus
now I accept that it is genetically
possible for two people of African
ethnicity to birth a white child but
this was the 80s England so I don’t
think that as a point my school was
trying to make so I asked for a black
baby they said no and in response when
all the parents came in I just refused
to smile that was a day that my inner
activist was born when I got to seven I
started to notice that I was different
to my peers that I concluded that I was
really really really intelligent hermia
so basically this is kind of the age
when they start to notice that I was
black and so they don’t ask me really
really crazy questions like why are you
black and because I was really
intelligent I’d give these over like
elaborate detailed explanations and I
would say I was boring black and this is
mind-blowing to them because then they
would keep asking me but why were you
born black and I’d never considered why
they were born white but I would kind of
say well I just was and we’d go back and
forth but it became very apparent that
this wasn’t a response they wanted so
not just being intelligent I was very
creative and so I made up stories now
retard the other kids that I was walking
to school one day in the pouring rain
and it was car drove past me
this massive puddle splashed me with mud
and by the time I got to school the mud
had dried so hard that I couldn’t wash
it off and the kids actually believed
this story and they’d be like is it true
and I was like yeah and they would go
and get their siblings and they come
back and say tell my story sister while
you’re black and so this became my
rhetoric that I would go around telling
people and the fact that they believed
such a ridiculous story made me conclude
they were idiots and I was really
intelligent many years later my birth
mother ie Berber tell me stories about
when she would go to work and she would
take her Nigerian lunches so she would
have her goosey you know Cassie Garre
and her colleagues would say what’s that
smell what are you eating what is that
and she would look at them and she would
say I am eating worms I am eating snake
I am eating insect and she said Samina
sometimes you just have to tell these
people what they want to hear
they think I’m a savage so I will act
like one
my serving yourself learn to tell people
what they I thought they wanted to hear
by the age of eight I had convinced for
the kids that my hair is made of sponge
because of course being black it
couldn’t be made of hair but by nine my
different start had become more of an
embarrassment and Ike remember going on
a residential and on the first night all
the girls had to shower and I was more
developed than my peers so we get into
the showers and Mike prepares went
fascinated by my body so much so that
they took it in turns to run into my
shower and to grab me here and to grab
me here to see what it felt like and at
the time I tried to laugh it off but it
was humiliating it was so humiliating
bit for the next three days I didn’t
wash and every day the girls would say
come herecome shower and I was like now
I’m not going and by the third day I
couldn’t tell whether they wanted me to
shower because they still wanted to grab
my hair or to see me naked or whether
it’s because I smelt so bad because one
of my guy friends turned to me and said
Samina you stink I couldn’t be me the
rest of that day the room were kind of
spread through the school and over the
next couple of weeks I can member being
pulled out of my class and sent to the
headmistress his office and as I got
there there was a male doctor in the
office and the head was down another
teacher and they had concluded that it
was unusual for someone my age to
develop so they wanted to examine me and
they pulled open my skirt and my
knickers and looked down to see that I
had hair and I returned to class when I
got home that evening my foster mother
Jean was absolutely furious when she
found out and she called the school she
said a few angry words and then she put
the phone down and she turned to me and
she said I did not give permission for
that to happen to you said I’m really
sorry
she said it takes all types of people to
make a world and there’s absolutely
nothing wrong with you and I was very
grateful for my mother for saying that
because it does take all types to make a
world and if we appreciate difference
and it’s not such as this intrigue that
we feel a right or an ownership to go
and touch and maybe if other mothers
shared that story with our daughters
then perhaps we wouldn’t be seen as too
much of another and my childhood may not
have been so humiliating
in 1810 a woman named starchy Bartman
was taken from
Africa and brought to the UK she had
distinct features she was a black woman
she had a large behind and they put her
on display in Piccadilly Circus and
thousands of eyes of the people become
year-on-year to stare and to point and
to touch fascinated intrigued curious
and she survived for five years in the
UK and when she returned so I went and
so she survived for five years in the UK
and when she died doctors and scientists
were so fascinated by her body they made
a plaster cast and they preserved her
organs in museums until the 1970s and in
2002 Nasser Mandela sent for her to come
home where she received a burial well I
think about the experience I had at
school with my peers and I think about
the women who answered the no you cannot
touch my hair a campaign survey and I
compare that to the experience of Sarah
Brightman I have to say that the actions
keep repeating themselves this
fascination with black bodies when I say
black bodies I include black hair has
been around for centuries so is the
motivation for touching hair different
to the motivation for those that went to
see Sarah Baartman I said that again is
the motivation the same for touching
hair as it is for the actions that
happen to Sarah Baartman in 1889
humanzees were first founded by a guy
named Carl Hagenbeck and he traveled the
world and he took tribes don’t be a
freak in trials and he presented them in
Europe and in the Americas and people
would come to stare and to see and those
whose existed until the 1960s and I
think to myself had I been born a few
decades earlier could this girl have
been me hundreds of thousands of people
came to point and to stare into view and
they even had signs and they would say
don’t feed the natives they’ve already
eaten many women in the responded to the
survey said that people touching their
hair it felt like being petted in a zoo
your hair looks like my pubes is what a
group of lads chanted at me as I walked
down bristol harbour side I’ve never
touched an afro before are the kind of
comments that people respond when I tan
them after they’ve just grabbed my hair
you can touch mine is a common response
I get in meetings or at conferences as a
trade-off for exchanging hair touching
one women said to me well if you haven’t
so beautiful people wouldn’t touch it
after I went up to her and said don’t
touch my hair again is the motivation
different because the actions are still
the same a 14 year old girl from Bristol
wrote in and said that she was in the
shopping mall and a group of girls came
I started playing with her hair from
behind and when she turned and asked him
to stop they laughed and walked away is
the motivation different because the
actions are still the same another woman
talked about her boss’s boss walking
past her desk every day playing with her
hair she said it happens not just to her
but to other women always of color is
the motivation different because the
actions are still the same a father
talked about his daughter begging to
have her straighten because the touching
it can become relentless and mother
talked about having to braid her child’s
hair every day because the touching had
come too much is the motivation
different because the actions are still
the same we live in this world that is
systematically unequal so we have
designed it to favor one group over
another and over another and we start to
say terms like unconscious bias and
micro aggression and macro aggression
but I would argue that we should really
be saying racism the motivation hasn’t
changed the actions are still the same
if you imagine that we were to describe
words as people then I would argue that
power would be the grandfather prejudice
would be the grandmother and together
they have given birth to racism now
racism hooks up with ignorant and they
create micro aggression if you imagine
that micro aggression is raised by
ignorance and racism what do you think
she’s going to become every time you put
your hands in my hair without my
permission you are her and
every time you asked my permission and I
say no you are also her and every time
you see it happen and you don’t call it
out and we don’t have systems in place
to stop it from happening
you are her I call hair touching hair
attacks every black person black woman
black girl deserves the same privileges
as our peers so we deserve the right to
go to work and to not be attacked we
deserve the right to have an education
and to not be attacked and we deserve
the right to go for dinner with friends
and not be expected to be the educator
of all things black hair black history
black hair care many of the respondents
were angry at the responses that come
when you challenge things so I asked
them what can we do what can be done and
they came up with three things one they
said that the touches just need to stop
touching so if you’re someone who
touches whatever you need to do put a
memo a post-it note on your computer
educate yourself but stop touching –
they said that more education and
awareness was needed and that looks like
more representation in mainstream media
more history in schools and not just one
month I hope that this talk today is
helped to raise some awareness in
education but don’t be complacent Google
YouTube exists so if this reaffirms your
position or if this is new to you then
learn share and three last but not least
they said that we need to call it out
more we all need to call it out more
what does that look like I’m gonna tell
you I’m gonna split us through the
middle you guys have a hero don’t when I
point you’re gonna say your word and you
guys over here a touch it’s two simple
words and this is how we call it I guys
that was weak
it’s two simple words if anybody who
doesn’t understand or doesn’t know isn’t
hasn’t experienced this yet this is how
you call it I I want to hear it loud
like these guys at the front I want to
hear one more time how do we call it out
Angela Davis said I am no longer
accepting the things I cannot change but
I am changing those things I cannot
accept I extend that to you and I say if
the motivation is truly different then
we need to let our actions be that
change thank you
[Applause]
let’s play a game
Mina says clap once great modern Mina
says high-five someone next to you
very good ok
Mina says touch the hair of the person
in front of you I’m serious
okay now they touch the hair of the
person next to you guys guys Mina didn’t
say that time come on you know the rules
thank you for playing just want to see
you by show of hands how many of you
just had your hair touched by someone
you’ve never met before
yeah it’s quite a lot of people and just
by show of hands how many of you were
like now I’m not touching anybody’s hair
today I’m with you guys I launched the
no you cannot touch my hair a campaign
survey in the summer of 2017
and just under half of the respondents
said they had their hair touched on a
monthly basis by people they’ve never
met before and within that 18% said it
happened once a week as you can imagine
unwanted and uninvited hair touching by
people you’ve never met before that’s
that’s my daily life about a year ago I
got exhausted with constantly saying to
people don’t touch like thanks for the
compliment but keep your hands to
yourself
and I kind of wanted a recorder to kind
of just press play but I figured that
prevention is much better than cure so I
printed these t-shirts and I started to
walk around wearing no you cannot touch
my hair and I wore them to supermarkets
I wasn’t to work into conferences I wore
them out socially but why I find is that
lots of people started asking me
questions so some people generally
didn’t know that this was a thing even
though it affects my life I was like yes
it’s a thing and some people were like
yeah I want a t-shirt that happens to me
so I want to start texting that data and
the survey was born as part of the
research for the survey I made this bit
of a social experiment Wow it has
amazing
the hardest part of that was trying to
like chase people lift up my shirt to
Cheryl’s wearing this new can’t touch my
hair a campaign t-shirt underneath at
which point they thought I was flashing
them and try and say no no it’s a social
experiment but what I did catch up with
people I asked him how it felt and most
of the people in the video said it was
weird and it was uncomfortable the
majority of our campaign survey
respondents said that it felt intrusive
if not invasive and they were very angry
and annoyed that this happened to them
one of the things that I find was that
the majority of respondents were female
so 90% in fact identified as female and
the majority of those were black women
and girls so we know that this is an
issue that affects black women and girls
more than any other race now a friend of
a friend
this white guy was saying yeah but Mena
you know I went on holiday to India for
two weeks and people were touching my
hair and lots of other women were saying
oh you know when you’re pregnant people
come up and touch your stomach and it’s
the same thing now I don’t want to take
that experience away from anybody any
form of unwanted and uninvited touching
is completely unacceptable but most
women on average only pregnant for nine
months so that type of touching will
come to an end and I’m not on vacation
on holiday and like many of the
respondents this is the country that I
was born in and it still happens some
people a very small minority said they
didn’t mind the touching and again
that’s cool but this campaign is really
targeted at the overwhelming
disproportionate number of black people
black women black girls that experience
this unwanted hair touching when I was
six years old I was asked to be Mary in
my school playing like get in the park
and the only other black kid in the
schools has to be Joseph and on the day
they gave us this white baby Jesus
now I accept that it is genetically
possible for two people of African
ethnicity to birth a white child but
this was the 80s England so I don’t
think that as a point my school was
trying to make so I asked for a black
baby they said no and in response when
all the parents came in I just refused
to smile that was a day that my inner
activist was born when I got to seven I
started to notice that I was different
to my peers that I concluded that I was
really really really intelligent hermia
so basically this is kind of the age
when they start to notice that I was
black and so they don’t ask me really
really crazy questions like why are you
black and because I was really
intelligent I’d give these over like
elaborate detailed explanations and I
would say I was boring black and this is
mind-blowing to them because then they
would keep asking me but why were you
born black and I’d never considered why
they were born white but I would kind of
say well I just was and we’d go back and
forth but it became very apparent that
this wasn’t a response they wanted so
not just being intelligent I was very
creative and so I made up stories now
retard the other kids that I was walking
to school one day in the pouring rain
and it was car drove past me
this massive puddle splashed me with mud
and by the time I got to school the mud
had dried so hard that I couldn’t wash
it off and the kids actually believed
this story and they’d be like is it true
and I was like yeah and they would go
and get their siblings and they come
back and say tell my story sister while
you’re black and so this became my
rhetoric that I would go around telling
people and the fact that they believed
such a ridiculous story made me conclude
they were idiots and I was really
intelligent many years later my birth
mother ie Berber tell me stories about
when she would go to work and she would
take her Nigerian lunches so she would
have her goosey you know Cassie Garre
and her colleagues would say what’s that
smell what are you eating what is that
and she would look at them and she would
say I am eating worms I am eating snake
I am eating insect and she said Samina
sometimes you just have to tell these
people what they want to hear
they think I’m a savage so I will act
like one
my serving yourself learn to tell people
what they I thought they wanted to hear
by the age of eight I had convinced for
the kids that my hair is made of sponge
because of course being black it
couldn’t be made of hair but by nine my
different start had become more of an
embarrassment and Ike remember going on
a residential and on the first night all
the girls had to shower and I was more
developed than my peers so we get into
the showers and Mike prepares went
fascinated by my body so much so that
they took it in turns to run into my
shower and to grab me here and to grab
me here to see what it felt like and at
the time I tried to laugh it off but it
was humiliating it was so humiliating
bit for the next three days I didn’t
wash and every day the girls would say
come herecome shower and I was like now
I’m not going and by the third day I
couldn’t tell whether they wanted me to
shower because they still wanted to grab
my hair or to see me naked or whether
it’s because I smelt so bad because one
of my guy friends turned to me and said
Samina you stink I couldn’t be me the
rest of that day the room were kind of
spread through the school and over the
next couple of weeks I can member being
pulled out of my class and sent to the
headmistress his office and as I got
there there was a male doctor in the
office and the head was down another
teacher and they had concluded that it
was unusual for someone my age to
develop so they wanted to examine me and
they pulled open my skirt and my
knickers and looked down to see that I
had hair and I returned to class when I
got home that evening my foster mother
Jean was absolutely furious when she
found out and she called the school she
said a few angry words and then she put
the phone down and she turned to me and
she said I did not give permission for
that to happen to you said I’m really
sorry
she said it takes all types of people to
make a world and there’s absolutely
nothing wrong with you and I was very
grateful for my mother for saying that
because it does take all types to make a
world and if we appreciate difference
and it’s not such as this intrigue that
we feel a right or an ownership to go
and touch and maybe if other mothers
shared that story with our daughters
then perhaps we wouldn’t be seen as too
much of another and my childhood may not
have been so humiliating
in 1810 a woman named starchy Bartman
was taken from
Africa and brought to the UK she had
distinct features she was a black woman
she had a large behind and they put her
on display in Piccadilly Circus and
thousands of eyes of the people become
year-on-year to stare and to point and
to touch fascinated intrigued curious
and she survived for five years in the
UK and when she returned so I went and
so she survived for five years in the UK
and when she died doctors and scientists
were so fascinated by her body they made
a plaster cast and they preserved her
organs in museums until the 1970s and in
2002 Nasser Mandela sent for her to come
home where she received a burial well I
think about the experience I had at
school with my peers and I think about
the women who answered the no you cannot
touch my hair a campaign survey and I
compare that to the experience of Sarah
Brightman I have to say that the actions
keep repeating themselves this
fascination with black bodies when I say
black bodies I include black hair has
been around for centuries so is the
motivation for touching hair different
to the motivation for those that went to
see Sarah Baartman I said that again is
the motivation the same for touching
hair as it is for the actions that
happen to Sarah Baartman in 1889
humanzees were first founded by a guy
named Carl Hagenbeck and he traveled the
world and he took tribes don’t be a
freak in trials and he presented them in
Europe and in the Americas and people
would come to stare and to see and those
whose existed until the 1960s and I
think to myself had I been born a few
decades earlier could this girl have
been me hundreds of thousands of people
came to point and to stare into view and
they even had signs and they would say
don’t feed the natives they’ve already
eaten many women in the responded to the
survey said that people touching their
hair it felt like being petted in a zoo
your hair looks like my pubes is what a
group of lads chanted at me as I walked
down bristol harbour side I’ve never
touched an afro before are the kind of
comments that people respond when I tan
them after they’ve just grabbed my hair
you can touch mine is a common response
I get in meetings or at conferences as a
trade-off for exchanging hair touching
one women said to me well if you haven’t
so beautiful people wouldn’t touch it
after I went up to her and said don’t
touch my hair again is the motivation
different because the actions are still
the same a 14 year old girl from Bristol
wrote in and said that she was in the
shopping mall and a group of girls came
I started playing with her hair from
behind and when she turned and asked him
to stop they laughed and walked away is
the motivation different because the
actions are still the same another woman
talked about her boss’s boss walking
past her desk every day playing with her
hair she said it happens not just to her
but to other women always of color is
the motivation different because the
actions are still the same a father
talked about his daughter begging to
have her straighten because the touching
it can become relentless and mother
talked about having to braid her child’s
hair every day because the touching had
come too much is the motivation
different because the actions are still
the same we live in this world that is
systematically unequal so we have
designed it to favor one group over
another and over another and we start to
say terms like unconscious bias and
micro aggression and macro aggression
but I would argue that we should really
be saying racism the motivation hasn’t
changed the actions are still the same
if you imagine that we were to describe
words as people then I would argue that
power would be the grandfather prejudice
would be the grandmother and together
they have given birth to racism now
racism hooks up with ignorant and they
create micro aggression if you imagine
that micro aggression is raised by
ignorance and racism what do you think
she’s going to become every time you put
your hands in my hair without my
permission you are her and
every time you asked my permission and I
say no you are also her and every time
you see it happen and you don’t call it
out and we don’t have systems in place
to stop it from happening
you are her I call hair touching hair
attacks every black person black woman
black girl deserves the same privileges
as our peers so we deserve the right to
go to work and to not be attacked we
deserve the right to have an education
and to not be attacked and we deserve
the right to go for dinner with friends
and not be expected to be the educator
of all things black hair black history
black hair care many of the respondents
were angry at the responses that come
when you challenge things so I asked
them what can we do what can be done and
they came up with three things one they
said that the touches just need to stop
touching so if you’re someone who
touches whatever you need to do put a
memo a post-it note on your computer
educate yourself but stop touching –
they said that more education and
awareness was needed and that looks like
more representation in mainstream media
more history in schools and not just one
month I hope that this talk today is
helped to raise some awareness in
education but don’t be complacent Google
YouTube exists so if this reaffirms your
position or if this is new to you then
learn share and three last but not least
they said that we need to call it out
more we all need to call it out more
what does that look like I’m gonna tell
you I’m gonna split us through the
middle you guys have a hero don’t when I
point you’re gonna say your word and you
guys over here a touch it’s two simple
words and this is how we call it I guys
that was weak
it’s two simple words if anybody who
doesn’t understand or doesn’t know isn’t
hasn’t experienced this yet this is how
you call it I I want to hear it loud
like these guys at the front I want to
hear one more time how do we call it out
Angela Davis said I am no longer
accepting the things I cannot change but
I am changing those things I cannot
accept I extend that to you and I say if
the motivation is truly different then
we need to let our actions be that
change thank you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: