My Hair Shows Me Anti-Blackness Exists Everywhere

My Blackness put me in a position to been seen as inhuman — and my Americanness forced me to accept it

Adam Mahoney
LEVEL
Published in
6 min readOct 7, 2020

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A Black man running his hand through his hair.
Photo: Eric Raptosh Photography/Getty Images

I last got my hair cut in March 2018, one and a half years before I first began my four-month stay in Vietnam. My hair is coarse and nappy. It’s untamed and sprawls out everywhere, but I like it that way…

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Adam Mahoney
LEVEL
Writer for

Black Journalist (he/him) focused on Black life, police and prisons. Split living between 310 and 312. Words in the Guardian, BuzzFeed and many more.