THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BLACK MEN’S HAIR
Your Hairstyle Can Cost You Your Life In Brazil
Brazil’s Black hair revolution continues — despite increased danger of police violence
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Diego loved his strawberry-blond tapered Afro. In the 16-year-old boy’s hometown in Brazil, the hairstyle is referred to as a “Black power” (pronounced “Blackee power”), named for the political movement that made it popular. For Diego, it was a badge of Blackness that he wore with pride. The attention it attracted from the opposite sex didn’t hurt either.
But Diego’s feelings toward his hairstyle changed on a Sunday in early February. As he was walking a friend home in his neighborhood in Salvador, an impoverished, predominantly Black city in Northeast Brazil, a policeman approached Diego. This was an abordagem — a stop-and-frisk. While that’s an all-too-common experience for Black Brazilian men, the graphic nature of this particular incident was caught on camera.
Without any provocation, a Black policeman pushed Diego into a wall and began hitting and kicking him. “You are a thief to me,” the officer said in Portuguese. “You are a bum! With that…
