A person’s hair can be used to express personality, mood, artistry and more. But in the black community, as Ohemaa Dixon explained, hair is also used to express identity.

Durags, headscarves, bonnets, scarves and “silkies” are prominent accessories for maintaining hairstyles. But misconceptions of durags and bonnets have led to cultural misinterpretations of the headwear, Dixon said.

“Let’s get it straight. From the jump, the durag is not a new black concept,” said Dixon, a sophomore art photography major at Syracuse University. “A lot of people think it’s this new concept, like a lot of white media, because they see a lot of artists using it, but this is something that’s been used.”

Dixon explained that the durag has been stereotyped as an accessory of criminalized black men, but ultimately, the headwear is simply used for the upkeep of hair, mainly in the private setting of a home.

Inspired by the viral hashtag #DuragDay that flourished on Twitter at other universities, like University of Northern Texas; University of Maryland, College Park; and Morehouse College, Dixon and her friends Caitlin Joyles and Cayla Dorsey decided to host a “#CuseDuragDay” on Wednesday.

“We started Durag Day as a way to unify the black campus at Syracuse and the black community, just to get some excitement for us to come together,” said Joyles, a sophomore public health major.

Dixon came up with the idea to bring Durag Day to SU. She said Dorsey — a sophomore public relations major — planned, created and promoted the event using flyers and word of mouth.

“Our thing is that we want to reclaim things to put them in positive lights,” Dixon said. “To show that black students here, especially black men and black women that are at a higher institution, are expressing who we are and still doing well.”

Joyles said she knows students who have been told to take their durag off while in class or when walking around their dorms, and others who have felt insecure about having long nails because of the negative stereotypes sometimes associated with them.

She added that she would never wear her durag out of her house alone because people may look at her differently, but in doing it as part of a community, she feels empowered to embrace part of her culture and show her identity.

The campus has been “static-y” lately, Joyles said. She explained that the university as a whole doesn’t feel much like a community but rather made up of small cliques that keep to themselves and do not embrace the rest of the SU community as fully as possible.

She said she feels that since SU is such a large university, especially in terms of minority populations, the promotion of Durag Day is a way for people to come together and understand an important component of black culture.

“This could be something that continues and is something that brings us together,” Dixon added. “You like to wear your letters or whatever it is because you like the sense of community, so this is something for the whole black community that we do.”

The group thought of the idea last week, promoted #CuseDuragDay on Sunday and hosted the event on Wednesday. They asked their friends to spread awareness of the event on Twitter and Instagram, the two social platforms where other universities’ durag days have gone viral.

Dixon promoted #CuseDuragDay on her Instagram account, using the hashtag and posting pictures of SU students donning their durags and headwear on campus on Wednesday.

“We’ve gotten people saying, ‘Thank you for doing this. Thank you for bringing this to campus. This is such a good idea,’” Joyles said. “We’ve had very few people be a little confused on the concept, and once we explained it to them, they were automatically going along with it.”

The #CuseDuragDay founders spent Wednesday walking up to other students wearing durags — some they knew and others they didn’t — and taking pictures and starting conversations. They noticed durags on students in the Schine Student Center and on the University Place promenade, and their friends told them they saw durags and bonnets in classrooms.

The three friends said they hope this day empowers the black community the same way as previous movements at the university have, like the die-in on the promenade in October 2016.

“This is the launch for us to do more on this campus and have an impact, have a voice,” Dorsey said.

Published on November 29, 2017 at 9:25 pm

Contact Connor: cbfogel@syr.edu