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Taking the dread out of locs

A column I wrote for Tuesday’s paper had the owner of Brownstone Natural Hair and Barber Studio at 17th and South streets squirming in her salon chair yesterday.

A column I wrote for Tuesday's paper had the owner of Brownstone Natural Hair and Barber Studio at 17th and South streets squirming in her salon chair yesterday.

Abenaa Timazee was taken aback at how in an article in Tuesday's paper I quoted WDAS radio personality Patty Jackson as having said"…That's what made me (dread)lock my hair, because my hair was getting too complicated." What annoyed Timazee was my insertion of the word "dread," which she said was an offensive way to refer to the natural hair style sometimes associated with Rastafarians.

"The term dread is actually a negative connotation," she told me, referring to how colonialists would refer to Jamaicans with the tightly coiled style as being dreadful.

"If you don't really know, you can offend and not be aware," Timazee pointed out.  "Now you can say locs."

Fair enough. I stand corrected.