The power of the Afro pick Small Thing Big Idea a TED series
Transcriber: TED Translators admin
Reviewer: Camille Martínez
You don’t really look
at a toothbrush and say,
“I’m great!”
But when you look at an Afro pick,
which is a grooming tool,
it can remind you in your
subconscious to, like,
really be proud and, like, “All right.”
[Small thing.]
[Big idea.]
An Afro pick is a utilitarian tool
used to maintain the Afro hairstyle.
I think the Afro pick was designed
for the ergonomics of creating something
that felt like you were running
fingers through your hair.
The shape, even the depth
that it goes in – it’s like a hand.
You have plastic or nylon teeth,
and then you have the stainless
steel or the nickel teeth.
I always prefer the metal tooth
just ‘cause I like the sound
and the ones I know have
the black power fist on the handle.
When I think of black hair in America,
I think of something that’s been policed.
Back in the days, it was
expected for black people
to chemically treat their hair.
Whether that’s healthy for them
is a secondary thing to blending in.
In the 50s, dancer Ruth Beckford
and a lot of jazz singers
were tired of straightening their hair,
so they said, all right,
we’re going to just let it grow naturally
and started rocking natural,
close-cropped hair.
And in the 60s, that style evolved
with the formation of the Afro,
which was the cropped hair,
natural, picked out
into a more spherical shape.
You had civil rights leaders, activists,
that adopted the hairstyle
as a means of rebellion and black pride.
And then you had musicians
like James Brown,
who was infamously known
for chemically straightening his hair,
reject that and go natural.
It went hand-in-hand with his music,
so he had songs like
“Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
The black is beautiful movement
is just rejecting the notion
that to be black
or to have darker skin,
to have a curlier grade of hair,
was something to be ashamed of.
I have one of my favorite
pictures of my mother
and my grandmother,
and my grandmother had a small ‘fro,
and that was in the 60s.
African hair combs date back to 3500 BCE.
The oldest African combs are found
in ancient Egypt and Sudan,
so they were making pyramids and combs.
The way the ancient African
combs were embellished
represented status or tribal affiliation.
It’s no coincidence that the fist
on the modern Afro pick
also sets the tone for affiliation
and what set you claim.
And then there’s the Black Power movement.
Most movements need their icons, right?
You have the fist, you have the ‘fro.
These things coincide with
the Black Panther aesthetic,
where you could kind of
spot your tribe from afar,
because you’re not just keeping
a pick in, like, your beauty kit.
It’s in your back pocket,
purposely with the first
outside of it,
and in your hair,
you’ll rock it in your ‘fro.
If I think about iconic Afros,
I definitely think about Angela Davis.
Her ‘fro personifies elegance, style,
freedom, rebellion.
You feel all of these feelings at once
when you see Angela Davis
fighting for her life in federal court.
By the 80s, the Afro style
became less radical.
The Afro picks are still
produced to this day
with the clenched fist,
so it’s the remnants of the movement
in the everyday object.
When I was young, it was
just, like, another object.
It was a comb.
But as I became more enlightened
to really understand
the roots and the origin
and the intentionality of the design
and why the fist
and all of these things …
I woke up.