Abstract
Most scholars of intersectionality argue that categories of inequality transform one another. In their empirical analysis, they routinely situate specific categories as master statuses, for example, “black woman” or “immigrant woman.” A growing group of scholars has begun to question the stability of these categories, arguing that context complicates even seemingly stable categories. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a hair-braiding salon located in the Las Vegas valley, where black West African immigrant women professionally braid black American women’s hair, I provide an empirical case that underlines how identity categories usually constructed as stable by sociocultural theorists are often internally contested within the communities that occupy them. My observations demonstrate that both West African and black American women contest competing explanations of what it means to be black women through boundaries. They rely on pejorative stories about the other group at a time when both antiblack racism and antiimmigrant sentiments are on the rise in the contemporary United States. In engaging in the politics of defining black womanhood within white patriarchy, the women reproduce gendered racial hierarchies.
Introduction
What does it mean to live within the margins of society as a black person or immigrant person in contemporary US political climate? Even more specifically, a black woman or a black immigrant woman? Scholars have relied heavily on concepts of master identities to demonstrate the stability of such defining categories as black or immigrant. However, I demonstrate the contextually contested categories within intra-racial dynamics.
Based on a two-year ethnography, I demonstrate how black women place themselves and one another in preexisting racialized and gendered hierarchies. I provide an empirical case for understanding how members of seemingly stable identity categories often contest the categories within intraracial dynamics and practice systemic racism that can reproduce racial hierarchies. More specifically, I demonstrate how black women contest black womanhood in these specific labor exchanges by drawing on citizenship in the contemporary United States while many Americans continue to marginalize both blackness and immigrant status. Women engage in the politics of defining black woman-ness for themselves within white patriarchy mainly by drawing on condemnatory stories about black American women and black immigrant women. Ultimately, in doing so, they sustain gendered racial hierarchies in my field site, a West African owned and operated salon, located within the Las Vegas valley. The city has an 11% black population and 21% foreign-born population, but census data do not distinguish between American-born blacks and foreign-born blacks.
Mimi is a black West African woman born in Senegal. She migrated to the United States as a teenager and began braiding hair in her home in New York before relocating to the southwest United States. In 2010 she and her husband opened their hair braiding salon, located miles from the Las Vegas strip. Mimi runs the salon and employs other African women as braiders. Scholars who have studied hair salons find that most stylists aim to please their customers (Bertoia 1985), and Mimi is no different. For her, it is essential that her customers, who are primarily black American women, leave satisfied with their styles.
The women in the salon, both customers and braiders alike, recognize the pressures of participating in beauty standards and hair maintenance routines (Synnott 1987; Furman 1997) as black women. The black American and African women often articulate similar experiences of racism and sexism within the contemporary United States. While scholars have documented the significance of head hair for women (Synnott 1987), Patton (2006) emphasizes that hairstyles are representative of black women within the black community. Hair relevance has been traced back to original African heritage and blacks continue to use hairstyles as cultural forms of expression and meaning-making. In early African diaspora, variations of hair ornaments, styles, and combs represented ceremonial celebrations and socioeconomic statuses among women. US slavery motivated the destruction of this culture through further practices of controlling the body. Slave owners would often shave the heads of female slaves as a form of punishment (Johnson 2013, p. 16). The removal of the hair not only degraded women’s personal appearance but simultaneously stripped them of cultural value. Today women don a variety of braided styles to celebrate black beauty. African women learn to braid in childhood play and define their craft in adulthood. These Afrocentric hairstyles allow women participation into beauty culture specific to black women that do not center Eurocentric standards of beauty celebrated in broader US society. Despite collective experiences; however, black women from West Africa and the United States both rely on pejorative stories about the other to distance themselves from one another, often reinforcing power structures within white patriarchy.
Feminist scholars employ intersectionality to articulate how various statuses intersect to shape locations within larger structures (Crenshaw 1991; Hill Collins 2002; Choo and Ferree 2010). However, in their analysis categories of identity such as black woman or immigrant woman identities become master statuses. Scholars of intersectionality have begun to use intersectionality to theorize the complexities of identity categories as well, emphasizing the incorporation of aspects such as regionality, religious preference, and class to reveal complications in master identity ideologies (Bettie 2014; Lamont 2000; Beaman 2017; Robinson 2014).
I conducted 25 months of mixed qualitative methodology in one African hair braiding salon, including ethnographic observations, unstructured interviews, and content analysis of various online review platforms for the salon location. Interviews allowed me to document and clarify the histories of braiders and customers, while observations provided details of interactions and context for any contradictory statements. My data reveal that as black women participate in these specific labor exchanges in the US immigrant braiding industry, West African women draw on controlling images of black American women as possessing substandard morals and culture, whereas black American women construct West African women as inferior based on national identities that privilege Americans (Hill Collins 2002). In doing so, the women contest black womanhood even as they share similar experiences in the contemporary United States.
In this article, I bring scholarship on blackness and citizenship into conversation to provide an empirical case of how categories become contested within context specifically among the African diaspora in the contemporary United States. I provide an empirical case that underlines how identity categories usually constructed as stable by sociocultural theorists are often internally contested within the communities that occupy them. I find that black women engage in unique ethnic labor that requires empathy and expertise yet formulate identities that establish distance based on nationality. I argue that black women contest black womanhood in these racialized contemporary labor exchanges by drawing on citizenship at a time when American people and institutions continue to marginalize both blackness and immigrant status in the United States. I ask, (1) how do black immigrant and American women 1 define blackness and citizenship between themselves as they interact and exchange diasporic specific labor for money and (2) how do these interactions challenge or reinforce race, gender, and citizenship structures.
Theoretical Framework
My argument begins with a discussion of my theoretical framework that discloses the various complexities in identity making that complicate its process and notions of master identities. I provide an intersectional analysis to demonstrate the complexities and complications associated with the formation of marginalized identities. I describe how the performances of master statuses developed from the margins of society are complex. Next, I show the convolutions associated with the formation of black identities in an international context. Finally, I demonstrate various ways in which black identity performances can result in exclusionary rhetoric and practices of distancing that reinforce racialized and gendered hierarchies.
Intersections and Complexities in Identity Making
Scholars are theorizing categorical inequalities through an intersectional lens and stress complex overlapping effects as crucial in effectively capturing multiply marginalized groups’ lived experiences (Hill Collins 2002; Choo and Ferree 2010; Zinn and Dill 1996). Therefore, women of color and immigrant women remain a relevant site for studying multiply-marginalized groups (Hill Collins 2002; Choo 2016; Mohanty 1991). They experience the intersecting consequences of sexism, racism, and nativism and may face further alienation based on appearances politics such as skin color, body size, age, and head hair (Synnott 1987; Furman 1997).
Existing feminist scholarship show how race, class, gender, and nationality intersect to shape experiences, often articulating their empirical analyses by designating, for example, race or citizenship as a master status of identity for certain groups. For example, scholars often construct black women as racially marginalized (Hill Collins 2002) and immigrant women as marginalized by their nation-state (Choo 2016; Kang 2003; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003) within American society.
Scholars discuss the formation of identities using intersectional analysis that includes race, class, and gender; however, performances of marginalized identities are complex and can emulate social positions in society based on varying aspects of identity that are not the assumed or dominant master identity. For example, Julie Bettie demonstrates how identity-making for young Mexican American girls explains the performance of self as classed rather than racialized. Concerning their peers, the Mexican American girls in her study performed class as their master identities as they navigated identity making in school (Bettie 2014). Master identities are often complicated by stereotyping and result in othering and distancing.
Narratives based on master statuses can govern an entire identity; therefore, various efforts are made to disassociate one’s self from a master identity. Ray (2017) describes identities of distance as a mechanism black and Latinx youth adopted toward circulating risk narratives that frame youth of color as potential risks of violence and pregnancy. Youth distanced themselves from risk narratives to form identities separate from the marginalized ones associated with them based on their race, gender, and age. Circulating narratives that accompany various marginalized identities and emphasize stereotypes impact the lived experiences of marginalized folks.
International Assembling of Black Identities
Blackness is a contested identity. Black folks have consistently developed identities within the margins of US society and become increasingly classed over time. Labor market practices that exploited blacks beginning with slavery have primarily contributed to the slow advancement of the black middle class in comparison to whites. While civil rights contributed to substantial black socioeconomic growth, blacks often draw boundaries from lower/working-class blacks based on identity politics by way of othering. However, blacks strive for racial unity despite the multitudinous forms of black Identities (Pattillo-McCoy 1999).
Internationally, blackness has been associated with noncitizenship status in international contexts from slavery that denied blacks citizenship in the United States (M. Alexander 2011) to practices in France that exclude blacks as full citizens (Beaman 2017). These exclusionary practices have taken contemporary forms. In The New Jim Crow, M. Alexander (2011) discusses how the mostly black (40.2%) US prison population is denied citizenship through an inability to vote. Additionally, blacks in France, like black Americans, remain within the margins and are excluded from participation in associations that privilege French citizens (Beaman 2017). Similarly, Lamont (2000) demonstrates the boundaries set for working-class men in identity making in The Dignity of Working Men. She shows how working-class men rely heavily on class formation and moral criteria, producing firm intergroup boundaries and providing context for race, religion, and nation as distinctive characteristics for othering in America and France (Lamont 2000).
At a time when both blackness and immigrant status remain marginalized, the social constructions of citizenship are also trivialized through the racialized, classed, gendered, moral, and political implications that influence its performance complicate identities; therefore, citizenship is a contested identity as well.
Identities and Distance among African Diaspora
Collectively blackness is celebrated and adorned by its occupants despite its recognition as a marginalized master identity. Despite ethnic and racial allegiance, those with marginalized master identities may find ways to distance themselves from the master identity associated with them. In practices of distancing among shared racial marginalization, the master status of blackness takes a back seat and individuals highlight their differences by performing other facets of identity as primary (i.e., class, nationality, and regionality). Feminist scholars have captured the varying ways in which distancing transpires, including how narratives associated with master identities situate in the context of regionality and class (Robinson 2014; Wilkins 2012).
The complex intersectionalities and assemblages that influence identity making in blackness for blacks in America accompanied by contextual meaning and identity politics complicate blackness (Puar 2013). While collective racial solidarity may remain, at a time when citizenship status dramatically impacts an American identity, emphasis on citizenship and nation can stifle racial solidarity in contemporary America. Blacks in America come from various parts of the world and understand their blackness in varying ways. Scholars have recently begun to recognize the experiences of blacks from other countries and how they manage their identities in the United States alongside other blacks (Adjepong 2018; Clerge 2014; Watts Smith 2014). These notions of identity become further complex as first- and second-generation black immigrants and Afro-Latinx folks increase the variety of identity preferences as well.
Black and Immigrant Marginalized in the United States
Despite citizenship status and nativity, black Americans remain within the margins of society and are challenged with various forms of racism, regardless of class. With the tremendous and growing overt support of the alt-right, definitions of “American” in the contemporary United States are becoming increasingly exclusionary, with immigrants and blacks pushed further into the margins. As people adopt gendered constructions of citizenship and employ them as master statuses, they enhance distinction and inclusion agendas that reinforce power hierarchies among individuals and groups (Choo 2016). Antiimmigrant rhetoric has portrayed immigrants as criminals and threats to the United States, with focuses increasingly zeroing in on immigrants of color as most threatening to the nation. While an American identity is one of privilege within the US context, unlike whites, blacks are rarely associated with an American master status. However, black Americans become “Americans” in the presence of immigrants in the contemporary United States.
Methods
In December 2015, I sought out a research location, and I chose Mimi’s African Braiding Salon, an African owned and operated salon located in Las Vegas valley, West of the city strip. I was interested in black women’s beauty experiences. 2 The owner appeared excited about my research, and I began my ethnography in January 2016. When I initiated my project, I had no specific intention to investigate the relationships between the West African and black American women in the salon but was interested in describing the setting and interactions as previous hair salon ethnographies have (Soulliere 1997). While ethnographers have provided insightful takes on salon settings and interactions within them for both employees and customers, many of them do not provide an intersectional application that includes the bodywork as a gendered and racialized project (Soulliere 1997; Bertoia 1985; Hill and Bradley 2010). While scholars describe salons that primarily serve people of color as cultural communities that specialize in black hair maintenance (B. K. Alexander 2003), cultural parallels became prominent through my interaction with the data from my research site. This project encompasses a larger ethnographic study on aesthetic labor and the intersectional analysis that includes race, gender, and nationality.
Lofland (2006) suggests you are more likely to be successful in your quest for access if you enter negotiations armed with connections, accounts, knowledge, and courtesy. My unfamiliarity with African culture and African salons emphasized my outsider status, but my previous visits to black American salon settings provided me with a slight familiarity with styling processes and some terminology. I relied mostly on my courtesy. As a mixed-race woman, my light skin and long curly hair indicated no obvious hindrance to my insider status but instead allowed my acceptance into the space as a black woman. However, while my blackness contributed to my insider status, I learned that braiders identified me as an American as their distinctions between American and African women became prominent in my data collection. Because of this distinction, I entered the salon as an outsider to them. I had so much to learn, and although I had had my hair braided several times, it was never in a salon and never by African braiders, who are well-known experts. I found myself oddly in limbo between familiarity and curiosity.
Navigating Spaces: Observations in a Las Vegas African Braiding and Weaving Salon
Mimi’s African Braiding and Weaving Salon is an open space with smooth cream-colored tile flooring. Upon entering the salon, large photos of women wearing various braided and weaved hairstyles cover the glass windows and door, in place of transparency. An electronic bell chimes each time the door opens. The walls of the salon are a deep burgundy; a color-scheme repeated throughout the salon. A vending machine filled with snacks, cold juices, and soft drinks hums; it is positioned directly to the left of the entrance and needs restocking daily. The waiting area has three cloth black chairs, a large black couch and an unusually large dark-brown, low-sitting coffee table, covered with various magazines and an oversized glass candy jar. A large white plexiglass sign covers much of the left wall; it has a purple outlined photo of Mimi (the owner), her head down displaying long Senegalese twists. Next to it reads “Mimi’s African Hair Braiding & Weaving,” with “Mimi” written in hot pink letters. The same signage appears outside above the salon doors.
The opposing wall is covered in simply framed photos of women modeling braided and weaved hairstyles similar to the photos on the outside glass. These images look like those seen in a professional hair magazine and are various sizes. Thin purple paper and various silver and gold foils fill spaces where photos did not fit in frames perfectly. The break area is the only separate area in the salon beside the restroom. The break room is approximately ten-by-ten feet and has an open doorway with no door. It is large enough to fit a brown love seat comfortably. The women employed in the salon rarely take breaks but when they do, they utilize this area to rest, eat, and talk on the phone. A microwave and coffee pot sits on a small stand in the break room, but the women rarely use them. A variety of sandals rest neatly in the corner of the break area as braiders often removed their shoes throughout the day. The break room is used primarily for the storage of synthetic hair. Boxes of synthetic hair fill shelving along the ceiling, and two walls covered with hooks hoist nearly fifty synthetic hair packages of various colors, lengths, and textures. Outside of the break area doorway, a sign in bold red font, strategically placed for all customers to see as they enter the salon reads: “NOTICE, PLEASE PAY BEFORE SERVICES, NO CHECKS, NO CREDIT CARDS CASH ONLY, NO REFUNDS, WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR SERVICE AFTER THREE DAYS, WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE.”
There are seven nearly identical braiding stations, each equipped with a black leather styling chair, black padded rubber mat underneath, and a large gold framed mirror with a black and gold marble painted cabinet beneath it. Each braider has a black and silver stool to sit on that matches the styling chair, but there are many extra stools lined up towards the back of the salon, near the restroom. The braiders rarely sit on the stools but sometimes use the stools for laying out rows of long synthetic hair. There is one large painting that is visible from almost anywhere in the salon. The painting is of two black women both dressed in African patterned dresses; one is standing, braiding the seated woman’s hair. Customers often ask about the painting, and Mimi says she had it made for the salon. In the back left corner of the salon is a more massive black and gold marble painted cabinet that matches the ones beneath each mirror at the braiding stations but this one extends almost to the ceiling. There are stacks of burgundy towels in the cabinet as well as clean smocks and various custodial items such as extra trash bags and paper towels. Next to the large cabinet is a duplicate of the ones at each station; only this one is not accompanied by a mirror and on top of it rests a glass jar with green liquid inside; various combs and brushes sit in the liquid.
Additionally, a hot plate is plugged in and placed on a towel. A glass pot sits next to the hot plate until braiders fill it with water and place it on the hot plate to boil; braiders use this several times per day, and the sound of bubbling water is an indicator that styles are near completion. Catty-corner the most massive black marble painted cabinet is a single black sink with large bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The stylists rarely use the sink as most customers come with their hair already washed and ready for styling. Depending on the number of customers and types of styles braiders create, at any given time bunches of hair lightly wisp across the floor of the salon in a range of colors, lengths, and textures. The hair is swept up periodically (almost every hour) throughout the day to keep the salon neat and tidy.
There is sometimes the faint smell of blow-dried hair in the salon or the smell of singed synthetic hair. Braiders sometimes burned the ends of braids to accomplish particular styles. They did this by placing a candle through the hole of a paper cup (like used at a candlelight vigil) and using the flame to burn the ends of each braid while the small paper cup collects the melting wax. More prominent was a faint smell of sewage that lingered in the otherwise comfortable salon. Kiki informed the owner of the building, of the smell, a reoccurring problem. I recall visits from the building owner himself, an older white gentleman. “That smell is back again huh, ok I smell it too. I’ll get some guys to come in and take care of that,” he said in an announcing-like voice. I recognized him from the last time the smell was potent, a few months prior. Several contractors visited the salon for three months, yet the smell slowly faded and returned periodically.
There are three flat-screen TVs strategically mounted on walls so that customers in every station can have a view. The salon has cable and runs American television programs such as local news, soap operas, game shows, reality TV, movies, and music videos from Black Entertainment Television network. While there are elements of African heritage throughout the salon, braiders dress primarily in trending American fashions. Additionally significant is braiders’ distinguishably different hairstyle choices over their customers. While customers most commonly visit the salon for braiding styles, braiders wear wigs most often, a symbol of class status in Africa (Babou 2008). When the salon had fewer customers and braiders did not need to help one another with styles, there were opportunities for braiders to style one another’s hair. They sometimes used these opportunities as a way to display various braided styles on one another for customers to see. My observations indicated the salon space as a hybrid of American and African culture as one did not seem to dominate the other; while there were many American elements within the salon, the French language spoken by braiders remained a significant contribution to the elements of an African atmosphere.
The salon employs eight to sixteen braiders, some work only temporarily, from several weeks to fewer than three months. Sometimes Mimi’s family members worked in the salon temporarily while visiting the city. Seven braiders have worked in the salon for more than one year (I consider these regular employees.” Two braiders have worked in the salon since it opened in 2010; Mimi, the owner, and Adena, her close friend.
Full-time braiders employed in the salon have their cosmetic licenses hanging on the walls in small, plain black frames at their braiding stations. The simple frames hold the white license and a thumb-sized photo of the braider. I conducted unstructured “go-along” interviews with seven full-time and six part-time braiders. Many of the part-time braiders I interviewed were temporary employees and family members of the owners, visiting from West Africa. Of the regular braiders I interviewed, Dona is the only braider who is not West African, but from Haiti. Noni and Delphi are from Nigeria, and Mimi and Adena are from Senegal. The braider’s ages ranged from twenty to fifty years. Eight braiders employed at the salon have children; Dona recently gave birth. Amani worked in the salon for six months before she left the salon and opened her own braiding salon, elsewhere in the city. Most of the braiders have a high school education and cosmetic license but learn to braid in childhood play and continue to master their craft long before receiving cosmetic licensing. One of the braiders, a relative of Mimi’s who only worked in the salon temporarily for one month, had a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Daniel and Adena, regular full-time braiders, recently began taking classes at a local junior college campus. Jena works as a part-time medical assistant (Table 1).
African Braiders Employed in the Salon.
Customers represented a range of socioeconomic statuses; they are primarily black American women and frequently other African women. Most of them work for pay, but some were unemployed. They are mothers, students, office clerks, police officers, mail carriers, medical staff, business owners, doctors, and retirees, to name a few.
I intend to demonstrate my findings as applicable to various social settings of women who share diaspora. My research maintains nationality and ethnicity as significant categories when describing braiders in the salon and describes customers based on nationality and race. I discuss this distinction between diaspora only because it became salient within my research data. I chose this field site mindful that “new and strange that is not too new and strange may be the best compound (Rock 2001, 33). Language barriers were most challenging to my insider-outsider status because West African braiders primarily spoke French and preferred it when conversing with one another. They eventually began greeting me each morning in French “Bonjour Nickie,” and as I spent more time in the salon, I noticed braider’s efforts to include me in conversations by speaking English more often while I visited or even translating conversations to include me. “Nickie we were talking about you in French,” Mimi informed me. “Oh ya, what were you saying?” I asked “I say Nickie is always the same size whenever she comes. You have a very nice body,” Mimi says. “Nickie if I was you I would be walking in here butt naked every day to work,” Adena teases and we all laugh. “I would have the shorts to here,” Anita says drawing an invisible line with her finger, right across her bottom. While I was uncomfortable with the discussion of my body, I felt relieved that the women included me when they could have discussed me without my knowledge. Over time, I occasionally recognized the general concept of conversations based on context. Braiders who filled me in on French conversations often confirmed my assumptions about topics of conversation.
While language barriers increased possibilities for misinterpretation, I intended to produce work that represented these women’s experiences as accurately as possible without overly imposing my Western influences. I accomplished the management of my Western influence in my research by centering the experiences of both African and American women equally. “Even those who insist that they value and understand cultural diversity as an integral aspect of American society do not differ from most others socialized in the United States in their assumption that there is, basically, one American society (Denzin and Lincoln 1994, 183).
To begin, I operated within the salon only as an observer, sitting in various areas in the salon, talking to the braiders and customers. Most customers’ appointments begin at 8:00 a.m. when the salon opens or at 1:00 p.m. This scheduling allows braiders adequate time to finish styles within salon operation hours. However, braiders often open the salon early and stay late for customers whose schedules do not match salon hours or whose styles take much longer than the average time to complete. When the salon had fewer customers, opportunities arose for braiders to practice styles on one another and occasionally even me. I volunteered in any way I could help around the salon. I swept up hair throughout the day and emptied garbage before leaving. The salon had nine garbage cans total; one at each braiding station, one large can in the break area and one in a small janitors closet. I emptied each small can into the largest one and carried the trash to a giant blue dumpster near the back of the salon. I often took food orders for braiders and customers. They much appreciated my errands, a convenience that prevented interrupting styling processes that averaged five hours.
When I disclosed to braiders that I was a mother, it helped me fit into the salon and allowed me inclusion into countless discussions about mothering, a dominant topic of conversation in the salon. Early in my research, I learned that the salon was always child-friendly. Kiki answered the phone several times throughout the day, and she frequently insisted to concerned customers that their children were welcome: “Do you need to bring your baby? It is no problem. Yes, bring your baby to play.” As a mother, I admired the element of having children welcome in the salon for the convenience of the parents who took advantage. Customers and braiders brought their children to the salon. Children ranged from infancy to teenage, and as a mother, I was granted automatic trust with assisting in their care. I tended to many children while mothers braided or received styles. I fed children, read stories, played with them, and tended to tantrums if necessary.
I learned about the braiders’ daily routines. Braiders worked more than fourteen hours some days taking few breaks and braiding not only their assigned customer’s hair but transitioning from customer to customer in order to help one another throughout the day. The braiders share customers to speed up styling processes. I shared authentic home-cooked West African meals with them when they brought food from home.
Once, Mimi’s husband Amahd brought in a large food pan wrapped in foil and placed it in the break area. I noticed how large the pan was when I retrieved my lunch bag near the microwave. He offered me food and said I could serve myself food first. I notice he has made his plate first but politely agreed. “This is African food,” he said, “I cook dis.” I made myself a plate. There were whole fillets of fish cut into small pieces. The skin, bones, and eyes remained. “I fry it,” he said, as I placed some onto a plate. “Dats couscous, plantains and salsa,” he explained as I continued to make my plate. I made sure to try some of each food item. Amahd insisted that I heat the food in the microwave before I tried it, “it will be much better” he said. I heated the food and ate with my hands; I used the fish bones as a spoon because I had no utensils. The fish was crunchy and lightly salted, I swallowed several small bones unintentionally. The couscous had a rice-like texture but was slightly mushy. The plantains were crunchy and salted and paired well with the mild salsa; this was my favorite part of the meal and the most familiar. Although I found the food slightly bland, I complimented Amahd on the meal he had prepared. I was most grateful to have been offered to share the meal and made sure to eat all the food I put on my plate. When I threw my plate away, Deema smiled at me. “Nickie you eat? She asked, continuing to braid her customer’s hair. “Yes it was delicious,” I said. “Ahhhhh Nickie” she said excitedly “Nickie eat the African food,” she announced in the salon. Avery joined her in excitement “Oh ya Nickie good!” I blushed, and although I was slightly embarrassed at the minor celebration, I was glad I was offered and ate the food, especially after the braiders displayed such excitement about it. Although I did not extend my research beyond the salon, braiders additionally invited me to house parties and dinners at their homes.
Small talk was minimal and rare; therefore, it was prevalent for me to observe long periods of silence between braiders and their customers throughout the day. Conversations that irrupted were often meaningful to their identities as black women and mothers. In the salon, we often discussed politics and significant current events. During one of my visits to the salon, as Catya and Adena shared one customer, the customer gasped at the TV as the latest news stories ran. “Charlotte, North Carolina, in a state of emergency,” the TV broadcaster reported. “Ohhhhh not again!! Oh nooo!!!” she shouted. “Adena this a damn shame, enough of this, no more shootings,” the woman hangs her head and closes her eyes in disappointment. Mimi speaks French to two of her new braiders who started in the salon that day. She nods her head towards the TV—images of a ransacked city, police in military gear, fires and violence flash on the screen. Every eye in the salon was on the television, and several of the women in the salon shake their heads and hang them low. I noticed a single tear run down the cheek of Mimi’s customer, a black American woman in her sixties, she did not comment, only shook her head and pursed her lips tightly.
Our conversations became increasingly intimate, evolving into discussions on romantic relationships and family dramas. When I struggled with gift ideas for my spouse, Adena encouraged me to “do something special in the bedroom.” At one point, Mimi confided in me about conflicts in her marriage and revealed a temporary separation from her husband; I listened to her as a friend.
I had become particularly close with the owner, whom I interacted with most during my time as a researcher in the salon. She planned a two-week trip to Africa and asked if I would be available to help in the salon while she was gone and act as a “manager.” I agreed but was worried about taking on such responsibility. Mimi saw me playing with one of the doll heads; I was attempting to braid. We laughed at my failed attempt, and she teased me about my lack of technique. She asked me to sit next to her so she could show me some braiding techniques on the doll head. As we practiced, Mimi told me that during my next visit to the salon I would begin to control the phone on my own and if I have questions I can ask her. These plans were how Mimi prepared me for her absence while she traveled to Senegal, Africa. I became trained in scheduling, canceling, and confirming the appointments for all of the braiders.
Customers who called to schedule appointments must provide a picture of the style they want via text message before or during our call, except for basic styles such as box braids or Senegalese twists. I provide customers with pricing and schedule them for an appointment in the appointment book. Mimi delegates all of the appointments to the braiders in the salon and customers will be styled by whichever braider is available at the time of their appointment unless they request a specific braider. Most customers who request a specific braider either request Mimi or Adena because they are the best braiders in the salon and have developed loyal clients. When customers request Mimi or Adena specifically, it was essential that I ensured there were no overlapping appointments and that the women would undoubtedly be available for the time and date I scheduled their clients.
While I had attempted not to overly impose a Western influence in the African salon, I learned that I had failed in this attempt. Fortunately, Mimi told me she appreciated the way I interacted with customers and that she desired an American receptionist who could perform customer service, an attribute Mimi told me is not dependable with African women. “It’s just not our culture and dey don know da right way for customer service,” she tells me.
Mimi and her husband were happy with my efforts to help in the salon while she visited Africa and by Mimi’s request, I eventually became a volunteer receptionist in the salon, making, confirming, and canceling appointments, answering styling and pricing questions, as well as providing the much-appreciated Western-style customer service to customers.
My friendship with Mimi developed immensely during my time in the salon, and she eventually referred to me as her sista—an endearing term usually only extended between African women. After my summer research ended in 2016, I was unable to spend regular, extended hours in the salon and my research schedule developed around my coursework. Mimi told me that she realized that she needed a full-time receptionist for the salon and asked me to conduct interviews, in which I did. I was able to help Mimi fill the position by conducting one private, structured interview and one telephone unstructured interview with her potential employees. The women I interviewed were young black American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty years. Mimi was adamant about them possessing Western-style customer service she desired. Interviews I conducted with her potential employees were much different from the interviews I conducted with customers and salon employees. Both interviews resulted in employment at the salon but lasted only temporarily. Mimi later told me that after a few months each of the women had become unreliable.
Restriction in movement for both braiders and customers due to prolonged styling processes prompted my choice to counter this obstacle through go-along interviews with braiders and customers. I spoke with braiders and customers throughout the styling process, allowing me to observe them in their daily practices. Informal interviews, as relaxed conversations, provided me with women’s various perspectives on multiple topics, including schooling, children, work, and politics. Content analysis of online review platforms provided me customer perspectives that I was unable to obtain through face-to-face interviews.
I did not use a tape recorder but instead took brief or sometimes elaborate field notes on my cell phone and notepad to recall conversations. More elaborate field notes contained direct quotes from meaningful dialogue. Upon returning home from the salon each day, I transformed notes from my visits into detailed field notes, while conversations and events were fresh in my memory. I elaborated on these experiences and conversations to my best ability, but quotations are approximations. While I have altered the names of all participants in this study for purposes of confidentiality, I acknowledge the interpretive aspects within ethnographic fieldwork and do not rely only on my interpretations, but implement my data as well.
Using the techniques of grounded theory, I transcribed field notes after each visit to my field site and coded field notes weekly in order to develop significant themes. Carefully analyzing my data, I remained attentive to taken-for-granted assumptions. Qualitative researchers should link meaning and action and analyze action in its collective context to identify processes that otherwise remain invisible (Charmaz 2014). I averaged five hours in the salon for each visit, inconspicuously taking notes as I conversed with women and throughout the day as prolonged moments without dialogue rest upon the salon.
One of the most critical missions of sociology is to bring to center stage the voices and viewpoints of rarely heard people. I aim to provide an account that communicates with the reader the truth about the setting and situation, as I have come to understand it (Denzin and Lincoln 1994, 496). By implementing these practices in my research, I best represent the women I encountered. I have intentionally refrained from demonstrating African braiders in the United States as third world women, an identity often associated with othering and demonstrates Americans as the center (Mohanty 1991). As a researcher, I keep in mind that my representation of my participants always represents a version of myself (Denzin and Lincoln 1994, 503).
Where Blackness Meets Beauty and Nation
Despite an emphasis on the advanced educational attainment and socioeconomic status of African immigrants in comparison to African Americans, previous literature did little to compare African immigrant women to African American women due to a lack of distinction between blacks in America (Kusow 2014). Most scholarship discusses black womanhood as a collective, yet I discuss the identity as contextually contested. Immigrant African women and black American women define blackness and American citizenship to draw boundaries between themselves as they interact and exchange diasporic labor for money through othering. Identities of distance form between Americans and Africans when nationalities are highlighted and create othering that separates the black American women, who are primarily customers, from African immigrant women, who are braiders and sometimes customers. Therefore, the joint racial collaborations result in respectability politics that reinforce structural oppression and white supremacy in the salon. Through my ethnographic observation, I illustrate the conceptual point that black women rely heavily on their identities of blackness and citizenship among the diaspora and ultimately contribute to hierarchies as distinctions of power that lead to systematic racism in the contemporary United States.
While braiders and customers esteem the results of the labor exchanged, nuances trickle into potential relationships, and othering creates distance. Women in the salon, both African braiders and American customers, emphasized their differences based on ideologies of national and cultural identities. Collectively, they relied on controlling images associated with master statuses of American black women and African immigrant women in the United States (Hill Collins 2000; Mohanty 1991). They centered pejorative stories about black women and generalized these characteristics in the identity-making process. Both African braiders and black American customers demonstrated cultural superiority through the performance of their newly emphasized master status, nationality. American customers contested blackness in America, using citizenship as an exclusionary tool and privileged identity, while African braiders demonstrated cultural superiority through highlighting moral aptitude as an African quality not inherently possessed by black Americans. Senegalese braiders and black American customers in the salon revert to identities of distance, emphasizing differences over likeness (Ray 2017). Therefore, nationality becomes the master status in the salon, replacing shared blackness. The close proximities necessary to complete styles as well as the extended time required to accomplish them create opportunities for cross-cultural exchanges and enhanced understandings, yet identities of distance flourishes in the salon.
The salon is distinguishable in two ways as a place. First, the salon is located in an American urban city, permitting citizenship as a privileged master status identity for the black American customers, positioning them as advantaged actors in the exchange and contributing to distributions of power within labor exchanges (Savage et al. 2017). Second, the salon is African owned and operated, providing ethnic labor sought out by American customers. This arrangement results in a reciprocal exchange. While American women benefit from the styles that African braiders provide, and perform the privilege of American identity, African women are paid for the exchange and operate in an African-owned salon. Collectively, the women emphasize differing national identities as others, ultimately resulting in what Ray (2017) describes as identities of distance.
Findings
Styling Identities of Cultural Distance
In defining blackness, nationality became the master status within the salon, and women differentiated based on the social construction of national identities. West African women constructed blackness through ideologies surrounding African culture, entrenched in morality, respect, and manners. Additionally, the salon owner explained that sisterhood is an essential aspect of African culture. Even African women who are not biological family members defined their relationships by referring to one another as “sistas.” The women arrived in the United States and the current city at separate times but met at African gatherings located throughout Las Vegas. They developed close relationships quickly. Some women in the salon had known one another for less than one year, but playfully teased and interacted with one another as childhood friends. Mimi (thirty, mother, salon owner) explained this to me early on in my visits to the salon.
Thank goodness we did meet because in our culture it is important, and now we have each other. We do not fight you know. . . . If we have problem, we go to her and talk; we do not act like Tom and Jerry (laughs out loud and smiles). Even if there is a problem that we cannot fix we just keep you there and her there, but no fighting and no one would ever even know that they do not like each other, because we are sista and we are close.—Mimi, salon owner
African braiders reserve these relationships for African women with few exceptions. African women value a sisterhood, but do not ordinarily include black Americans. After nearly two years of fieldwork at the salon, I am adorned with the title of “sista” when I call Mimi and ask for an appointment with her to get my hair done. I rarely have my hair professionally styled but am aware of the various styling routines. Just like any customer, I showed Mimi the style I liked, provided a picture from my phone, asked her availability and the price.
Nickie do not eva talk to me about money again. You are my sista and such a good friend to me when you don have to. I know you all dis time, and now I know your heart, and you are good and das why you are my sista. I mean dat, ok? Neva, again you talk money, ok? You are my sista now.—Mimi, salon owner
Braiders do not explicitly distinguish polite mannerisms and characteristics as African characteristics but describe them as qualities that Africans possess. The women rely on identity politics that distinguished African mannerisms from black Americans’, highlighting moral characteristics that emulated white middle-class standards as inherently African. Similarly, Lamont’s (2000) work on working-class men in France and the United States provides an example of analyzing moral character to create distance. Men emphasized moral character as an attribute extended to those of similar racial, national, and religious backgrounds and one lacking in those with different backgrounds from their own.
Braiders and customers evaluated my moral character in the salon as an American. I swept up hair periodically throughout the day to be helpful and engaged with the women at their styling stations. Styling processes usually require several packs of the synthetic hair of the customer’s choice. When the braiders remove the neatly packaged hair and take small pieces from the large bundle to braid or twist onto customer’s natural hair, this process results in an abundance of stray synthetic hair throughout the floor of the salon. Noni, a Senegalese woman (35, mother, nurse), who is a regular customer and close friend to Mimi (the salon owner), explained how my helpfulness in the shop emulates African culture.
You know I see you in here, and you sweep and take out trash, and I’m like, is she from Africa? Because this is what we learn back home. If you are in someone’s shop even if it’s not your mom, you help out, and when I see you do dis, I am like wow she is nice girl, and I like that.—Noni, nurse
African women perceived my courtesy as an African cultural attribute in the salon. Although I was assigned an American master identity within the salon, as I submerged myself into the setting, some of my favorable attributes became associated with African cultural norms, rather than American ones.
Additionally, Mimi told me that the most challenging aspect of being a business owner was her age because, “in our culture, we have a strong belief in respecting elders; this makes it hard to direct the ones who are older than me.” Although this is likely a struggle of many young business owners, Mimi centers her national and cultural beliefs and practices distinguished from Americans’. Cultural distinctions practiced collectively result in identity distancing among the women in the salon. Within the salon African braiders and American customers rely on these identity politics to establish blackness.
As the salon receptionist, I received calls concerning booth space monthly. Stylists seeking workspace called and inquired about available booth rentals. Each time, I relayed the message to Mimi, and she declined. As usual, she scrunched up her face and shook her head and finger simultaneously. Even when Mimi needed new braiders, she declined to rent out booths to American stylists who called. The women who sought employment at the salon had two characteristics that the other braiders did not; they were strangers to Mimi and were not from African countries.
Mimi had no interest in hiring non-African stylists in her salon but made some exceptions. Mimi has plans to open a one-stop beauty shop that includes women of multiple nationalities, who provide a variety of cosmetic services, a common theme found in Wingfield’s ([1977] 2008) ethnography in an African salon. These data show how cultural stereotypes circulated within the salon and the reliance on them create otherness that ultimately reinforces oppressive categories.
That’s How They Are
When I stopped by the salon for a brief hello, I talked outside to Adena, one of the salon’s longtime employees. As we chat, I told her how grateful I am that Mimi has allowed me to study in the salon. I explained to her my horrible experience with another salon owner when looking for a field site.
I explained to Adena how another unfriendly salon owner had embarrassed me in front of an entire salon of people when I asked to research her salon. “Mmmm, Oh my goodness Nickie, you see?” she opened her eyes but continued to shake her head. “Was she American?” she asks, brows raised. I am taken off guard by the question but try not to appear so in answering. “She was,” I paused, a bit confused, “Yes American,” I answered. I found the distinction so odd at the time as I have never referred to black women as Americans, only black women. “You see?” Adena tilts her head. She gives me a look, indicating she is not surprised by my story. Adena’s comment revealed her reliance on controlling images and identity politics when defining black American women’s blackness. Her assumption that black American women are particular to having unfriendly attitudes additionally establishes difference between African immigrant women and black African American women, establishing black American women as the “other.” This example demonstrates the various ways in which the African braiders internalized cultural preeminence concerning their black American customers.
Despite co-opted cultural preeminence, braiders did not voice or perform a cultural advantage in the presence of American customers but treated them with kindness and respect. However, contradictions surrounding African women’s sustained moral character arose in the salon when other African women visited as customers. African braiders displayed ethnocentric attitudes toward one another. Despite Mimi’s explanation of African women’s predetermined sisterhood, on more than one occasion I observed conflict interactions when Ethiopian customers visited the salon; West African braiders displayed microaggressions toward them, and interactions were often unpleasant in comparison to interactions with American customers.
One Ethiopian woman visited the salon desiring a crochet style. When the customer explained her desired style to Mimi and provided the synthetic hair she wanted to use, Mimi explained to her that the hair she has chosen might not provide the results she wants. The woman was confident that this is the hair she wanted and sure of the style she wanted. Mimi passes me a sharp look and rolls her eyes after the woman is seated. She later whispers to me that the woman does not know what she is talking about and that she will complain when her hair is done. “She Ethiopian and das what dey do,” she tells me, “dey wan complain no matta what jus to get someting free, watch you will see.”
When Mimi finished the style, the woman did not immediately complain. However, minutes after leaving the salon, I hear Mimi speaking unusually loud on the phone, ultimately ending the call with a “fuck you!” Normally maintaining a calm demeanor, this was the only time I had ever heard Mimi swear or yell. She was distraught. She was correct in her assumption about the woman who called the salon to complain once she had left and she even returned to the salon with her husband shortly after calling. The verbal altercation ended with the women passing insults back and forth, and the Ethiopian woman was asked to leave. Mimi said that she knew the woman had a plot the whole time to complain about her hair whether she liked it or not because of the reputation she associated with Ethiopian women. “I feel bad because dey are my sista, but this is why I don’t want to deal wit dem, you see Nickie, I told you.”
The woman had threatened to report Mimi’s salon to the board if she did not receive a refund. Mimi did not give her the refund because she said there was no mistake made on her part. She was adamant that if she had made some mistake, she would have compensated the woman but refused to do so based on the woman’s malicious intentions. This tension I witnessed between braiders and Ethiopian customers was not isolated. However, this distancing still relied on nationality as a master status and distancing occurred between African women from different African countries. Kusow (2006) indicates that African immigrants from his study do not understand blackness as defined in North America, and these unshared assumed norms differentiate them from African Americans. Cultural and religious signifiers were dominant identity traits over skin color for the immigrant population he studied, much like the moral and cultural signifiers found in my research. These data show how the interactions between Senegalese and Ethiopian women demonstrate additional ways women contest identities of blackness and citizenship in this space through the performance of national identities.
Performing Black Nationality
Black Americans rely on identity politics and ethnocentrism in defining blackness and additionally perform citizenship in doing so. While I have not yet encountered verbal, face-to-face insults between black American customers and African braiders, I discovered numerous examples of othering and distancing from various online review platforms for Mimi’s salon. Black Americans appraise nationalities as hierarchical tools against braiders when they are unsatisfied customers. Performing an American master status reinforces its privilege, and emphasizes the construction of braiders’ immigrant status as inferior. These practices are especially relevant at a time when the contemporary US political climate reinforces dominant categories such as American citizen by constructing them as salient.
The social construction of identities creates hierarchies within identity-making processes, contributing to essentialist and ethnocentric views when centering Americans as supreme and dominant. For example, Mimi tells me that she feels that Americans perceive her as intellectually deficient because of her accent. One American woman she hired as a receptionist (when she enlisted my help) was an unreliable employee and lied to Mimi about having a medical emergency that prevented her from attending work. Mimi told me that the woman brought her some paperwork from the emergency room that Mimi suspected was fake. “Because I am from African, she tink I don know what da [papers] supposed to look like, but I do. I am not dumb, and when she bring me dat I know right away dat is fake.” The receptionist’s tactics to deceive Mimi come from her view of Mimi as a “third world woman.” She makes assumptions about Mimi based on her national identity and deems her ignorant to common adult knowledge. The manipulation tactics attempted on Mimi stifle their working relationship and provide another example of pejorative stereotyping based on national difference.
One day, Mimi asks me to take a look at several online review platforms regarding her salon; she had become concerned about several bad reviews the salon has received. Based on past complaints, Mimi believes that American customers may perceive her as rude because of her English vernacular and robust African accent but explains that it is not her intention to be rude. I observed Mimi’s routine customer service throughout my time in the salon and did not interpret her as rude. Scholars have found that stylists emotions often mirror their customer evaluations and unsatisfactory evaluations often lead to negative emotions (Hill and Bradley 2010). When I examined the online reviews, most reviews were from unsatisfied customers unhappy with the salon service, be it their specific style or the demeanor of the braiders; this is often the case with online reviews (Hsueh, Yogeeswaran, and Malinen 2015). I found several culturally insulting and nation-specific customer reviews in which identities of distance are apparent.
I provide slightly modified reviews from online review platforms. I chose to adjust exact wording for confidentiality purposes but maintained the meaning of each statement. I discuss how they demonstrate identities as contested and master statuses as fluid.
I don’t know where to begin. This is one of the most unprofessional salons I have ever encountered in my adult life. They sit and talk about people in another language because they think others can’t understand. I actually know their language lol, and I know they talked about every customer in the salon on this particular day. I found it sad, actually. In a shop full of Americans who speak English, if you know English why keep speaking African the entire time? Very disrespectful. Mimi the owner seemed nice but also spoke about the customers with other workers while they all laughed, thinking no one else knew what they were talking about.—Customer Review 1
Uncomfortable with the braiders speaking in a language in which she was unfamiliar, this customer feels disrespected and, therefore, writes a poor review about her experience in the salon. “When people perform an identity, they are not only reflecting and responding to social structures but also drawing lines of cultural difference between themselves and others” (Robinson 2014, 15). The customer performs citizenship as her master status using ethnocentric ideologies that place Americans at the center so long as they are present. Gendered processes involved in beauty labor intersect with racialized customer expectations when performed by black immigrant women for African American women. Unsatisfied customers take to the web to disclose their experiences and often replicate the antiimmigrant sentiments held in broader society.
Unhappy customers used blackness distinctions in complaints against their services—the national distinctions in this salon review “others,” the braiders from black American clients, using “us” to refer to black Americans. The reviewers use nationality distinctions that rely on the assumed prestige and privilege associated with the performance of American citizenship to demean African braiders who have provided poor service.
American customers most often distinguished themselves from African braiders when unhappy with the service they received. Another customer uses nationality as a master status to exclude African braiding salons from the support of black-owned businesses in the United States.
I just moved to Las Vegas and needed my hair done for work. I searched, and this place is where I decided to take a chance, Never Again!!! If you care about your hair, scalp, and money, DO NOT GO TO MIMI’s! Her prices are not fair. I am all for spending my money at black-owned businesses. So, no more Chinese nail shops or Africans salons. Can I get one great black-owned business that can handle my beauty needs?—Customer Review 3
This review demonstrates strong power networks discussed by Savage et al. (2017); they determine that “actors in the advantaged network position can exclude others from exchanging without costs to themselves” and efforts by the disadvantaged actors to appease the advantaged actors result in “maximum inequality” (551). By excluding Africans from black business support and relying on problematic immigrant rhetoric, this customer flexes her advantaged position of power through the performance of American identity, reinforcing power structures through an emphasis on American citizenship as privileged status and distinctive category. Excluding African women from the support of black-owned businesses by distinguishing nationality relies on immigrant rhetoric that reinforces racial hierarchies and white supremacy.
Distance through Admiration and Indifference
While the online reviews by black American customers may collectively demonstrate, antiimmigrant rhetoric in varying ways, it is important to note that online reviews possess particular biases (Hsueh, Yogeeswaran, and Malinen 2015). Also, I intend to represent the salon customers as a multifaceted group. Many customers whom I interviewed were adamant about receiving services from African braiders. Despite the negative online reviews that customers posted, American customers spoke to me about the African braiders in the salon with admiration for their expertise in braiding, and distance was not always achieved using antiimmigrant conducts.
I answer the shop phone, and a male customer is calling inquiring about the price of twists. “Ya I need to find someone who can do my twists because I just moved from New York and I would always get them done by Africans and I got it done out here twice before but it wasn’t good, so I need an African to do it, yall got Africans there right?” I tell the man that all of our braiders are from Africa and tell him that I do not braid and only answer the phone and take appointments. I thought this would reassure his uneasiness as I am sure he was skeptical due to my lack of accent.
It is important to this customer to receive services from an African braider as he specifically seeks out their expertise. Based on his experiences with braiders he has concluded that African braiders possess particular skills that provide him with the best results and satisfaction with his twists.
While some customers were adamant about receiving services from African braiders, other customers based their decisions to come to the salon on other aspects. One customer, an African American student attending the local university, voiced indifference to cultural aspects and explained to me her reasons for choosing Mimi’s salon.
I mean honestly I have heard things from family members about Africans being good braiders and all that, but that is not what made me come here. I choose a stylist based on their work quality. I think it’s kinda strange to say all Africans can braid anyways. I mean I had a good experience with Mimi, but I saw her work before I came to her, plus she is the owner, and everyone knows that the owner usually has the best work. So for me, I would prefer to go to the owner of a salon versus going to someone just because they are African for the best quality. I can even speak to the quality of African braiders in general; I can only go off my experience with Mimi. She did do an amazing job on my hair.
This customer was opposed to the idea of assuming that all Africans could braid and only felt comfortable discussing her experience with the stylist as an individual. However, her assumptions about the quality of a stylist’s work were led by their position within the salon, giving preference to salon business owners as inevitably reputable.
Some customers in the salon also expressed admiration for the culture and country of African to braiders. When braiders came dressed in traditional garments from Africa they consistently received compliments from customers. Customers often talked about wanting to visit African countries someday. One customer who had visited the country of Senegal discussed her experience with me and how she favored the lifestyle in Senegal over the United States.
Girl let me tell you if you ever have the opportunity to go it is well worth saving up for and going. It is absolutely beautiful, just beautiful. It was nothing like I expected and I could not even imagine how beautiful it would be. It’s just so different you know then here, and it was hard to get used to. They go to the market for everything they eat and eat like four meals a day, all prepared for them too. They had this chicken and oh my God (she rolls her eyes back and closes them), girl I’m telling you that was the best chicken I ever had in my whole life it was so fresh like you can taste it, it was amazing. People think Africa and think everyone is all poor, girl no. Where I stayed, they well off and have servants and drivers and all that. They had a three-level house with around ten rooms. They are all well off though. Their daughter does modeling, and they own their own clothing business, and they son has a store too. So they are all business owners, and that’s how they are good financially like that.
Although this woman does make obvious cultural distinctions based on her experiences in Africa, she does so with admiration for the scenery and lifestyle of the people in the country of Senegal in comparison to those in the United States. She speaks to how her visit to the country changed her previous perception of the country and its people.
I highlight how black woman-ness is framed by both American and African women mainly through otherness that creates the potential for cultural nuances. In highlighting unique labor performances that result in distancing, this paper offers complex ways in understanding how black women experience and enact intersectionality through manipulation of their master identities and ultimately by employing “identities of distance” (Ray 2017). “Internal differences heighten awareness of and sensitivity to both commonalities and differences, serving as a constant reminder of the importance of comparative study and maintaining an artistic tension between diversity and universalization” (Zinn and Dill 1996, 329).
Researchers demonstrate a divide among blacks of different diaspora within America, indicating a preferred cultural distinction between different diaspora (Kusow 2006; Foner [1945] 1987). Therefore, it is essential to look at nation as an axis of experience. Individuals’ experiences within nations mainly develop their cultural identities, which distinguish difference among groups. African women mostly identify with African nationality and black Americans with blackness based on Americans’ national adoption of color distinction. Because of a national distinction between diaspora, the women emphasize otherness, resulting in what Bonilla-Silva ([1962] 2010) describes as racial structure, “totality of the social relations and practices that reinforce white privilege” (9). Recently, scholars have insisted on problematizing unmarked categories of power to effectively apply intersectionality within research (Choo and Ferree 2010). The intimate gendered body labor intersecting with ethnic and national identity differences disrupts how black woman-ness is defined from the margins and within a white patriarchy. Identity distancing and pejorative narratives of opposing cultures work to sustain race and gender hierarchy.
Conclusion and Future Research
Through my research, I extend critical feminist studies that introduce intersectionality within identity making. Specifically, I satisfy current requests to consider race and nation as an axis and apply this notion within identity-making processes. I argue the importance of recognizing the experiences of women of color who form identities from the margins of society. Identities of distance thrive in a space that collectively celebrates black beauty as a result of the emphasized difference among black diaspora in the salon. Nationality and citizenship become master statuses in place of commonalities in racialized and gendered experiences. Dominant discourses that stereotype black women as culturally inferior shape the landscape of meanings that women draw upon. By othering black women based on national differences, women strengthened hegemonic discourses and preserved unenviable rifts in the black community and within the continental United States.
The women developed their sense of selves centered on their ideal black woman-ness yet created distance in tandem. In the process, they often deployed stereotypical ideologies in culturally insensitive ways that stigmatized black women collectively. I show that these sorts of culturally exclusive ideals should be critically examined by scholars to better understand their connections to white supremacy and hegemony as well as collectively understanding blackness.
My study answers questions about how black women create identities engaged with black woman-ness to create distance from black women of different nations from their own. They undermine their relationships with black women who do not share their culture as they construct an identity and establish themselves as superior. The openness of the salon and long duration of styling resulted in rare opportunities for privacy during my interviews and was a limitation in this project. Additionally, the use of online reviews, known for bias (Hsueh, Yogeeswaran, and Malinen 2015) is a limitation. To combat this, I have included additional data from unstructured interviews as well in order to demonstrate respondents as a multifaceted group. These limitations do not discredit the plethora of rich data I collected and analyzed as observations, and online content analysis also helped to make up for contradictions and lost dialogue in interviews. My ground-level ethnographic observations offer a rich context of nuanced practices that challenge some generalizations about black women’s identities and the processes that accompany it.
Future research should draw on large-scale qualitative data to investigate the extent to which media, academic, and simplified representation of black women shape the landscape of meanings that all multi-marginalized women receive in diverse ways. Additionally, how do men navigate racialized and gendered dominant discourses and what are the politics of identity making for men of the African diaspora? Also, are there observable differences between how different diaspora engage in this process? Engaging these questions could help illuminate how focusing on nation as a differentiating category can obscure the connectedness for marginalized groups and create oppressive conditions that result from navigating within the social world.%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thank you Dr. Ranita Ray for your commitment to feminist mentorship, insightful discussion, and comments on this article. Thank you Dr. Georgiann Davis I am grateful for your comments and helpful advice throughout the process of writing this article. Additionally, my dissertation committee members Dr. Robert Futrell and Dr. Brandon Manning provided helpful feedback throughout my research and writing processes. Thank you to all my family, friends, and colleagues who reviewed this work at various stages.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
