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Negroclash!

WaPo dissects the Frohawk

I was going to blog about our next redneck gun toting Vice President, but while scoping the Washington Post I ran across a particular article about the “Frohawk” which interviews Couch Sessions homegirl M.J. Zilla. The WaPo is claiming that the Frohawk (er, black people wearing mohawks) is enjoing a “renaissance.”

You’ll find it in the explosion of dreadlocks fanning out from the otherwise shaved head of a doorman at trendy Marvin in the District. See it doing a more subdued low-rise fade on Redman as he bounces onstage with the Wu-Tang Clan recently at the “Rock the Bells” rap tour. Or check it out, in all its glamour-girl glory, on Jack Davey, from the Los Angeles electronica duo J*Davey.

And stalk the gallery at Afropunk.com, the online community that sprang up in the wake of filmmaker James Spooner’s 2003 documentary of the same name, and you’ll encounter a bevy of fro-hawked folk who go by such monikers as AfrocousticPunk, Rape Whistle and Aunaturale22.

To be black and Mohawked — or fro-hawked — is to rage against both the machine and one’s own community, a double dose of in-your-face outsiderism, rendering a life lived on the outskirts of the outskirts.

Even though WaPo is trying to pimp the term “fro hawk,” (just like the New York Times tried to invent “blipster,”) the people interviewed in the WaPo article at least get the chance to set the record straight.

“Just because I’m a black guy with a Mohawk doesn’t mean that it should be called ‘fro-hawk.’ ”

“It’s a little racist,” Collins says.

I don’t want to call these type of articles racist, per se, but just like the Time’s “blipster” writeup, I do find the sort of shock that young Black people don’t all wear baggy jeans and listen to hip-hop to be a tad condesending.  I know there are a few Afropunk peeps who frequent the site. What do y’all think?

Tags: Frohawk

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