‘ No Braids, No Beads, No Locking of Hair ’: ‘Race’, Nation and Identity in (Post)‐Colonial Jamaica

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the links between hair and Jamaica's often unnamed ‘race’ politics as an expression of waywardness. Using a court ruling in which a 7‐year‐old, female student was mandated to cut her hair—at the time worn in locs hairstyle—it teases out the links between embodiment, coloniality and incidents of racism which show up in the state's (post)‐colonial imagination of itself as ‘new’ and sovereign.