He Said He Has “That Puerto Rican Hair"…. Is Black Hair Not Good Enough

When going to grab a bite to eat with a new guy friend we somehow got on the topic of hair. We both moved to the DMV area about 8 months ago and he was expressing his struggles of finding a good barber.

I had always been curious about how do guys find barbers. Do they just walk into a shop, or do they rely on word of mouth?

He then said that he met a couple guys on a nearby basketball court and after the game asked for suggestions on barbers. He took their advice, went, and ultimately said that the guy just didn’t do a good enough job as his guy back home.

He then proceeded to say that they don’t know what to do with his “Puerto Rican hair”. I hadn’t know him that long so of course my response was, “oh you’re Puerto Rican?” to which he responded “no, but you see how good my hair is, there has to be something mixed in me down the line.”

This comment definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, he did have nice hair that curled with a smooth texture, but why does it have to be “Puerto Rican”? Us natural girls get bothered every other day from people assuming we’re mixed because our hair curls nicely, and we fight to explain that all black hair is good hair. To hear an African American male try to put off the fact that his hair texture is nice onto an ethnic group that he doesn’t even know he’s apart of was saddening.

Yes, I know he probably wasn’t THAT serious, but why can’t just African American hair be good enough. We come in so many different shades of course our hair textures will have variation as well.

What would your response to this comment be?