Getting Some Head: Motherf*ckin Mini Episode

watched the show. I looked at the premise of three very unlike people, one of which were Sterling Brown, a black man, having to call these people family, and I said, nope, no thanks, this isn't gonna turn out the way I wanted to. What I would have loved is Sterling came Brown commits a massacre against the white devil that traps him in his home, and then they tell that story. But no, ABC wanted to tell a family drama about a man who was burned in a fire spoiler alert.

And also, somehow, despite having a healthy upbringing, Sterley Came Brown still has a crackhead daddy. I don't know. Seems problematic to me. But that's neither here nor there. I haven't even introduced myself. I'm your host, Lengths and Kerman as always, I'm coming in hot. I'm talking about crackheads and house fires. This is the way the podcast was always meant to be. And I am excited because today I'm gonna be digging into a conspiracy that was sent

to me by a person named Bree. Breeze sent me a conspiracy that that I loved right from the beginning. She sent me an email. In the subject line she said, rubbing niggas heads for luck to question marks, rubbing niggas hads for luck. I had to do it again just to make sure I could. I could include that second question mark in the way that I pronounced it, rubbin nikkas heads for luck. Breeth was confused right from the subject, but she says high legs and love the show. You're

funniest fuck. Well, thank you, Bree, et cetera. I was gonna send a voice note, but I'm high right now and it would take me entirely too long to figure out how to send this email from my phone. Well, Bree, you shouldn't be that high. It's uh it's pretty basic. You just open the app and you talk into your phone. But if you're struggling, I respect your choice. Something my mama r I p Queen Pam would tell me and my brother when we were younger, while effectively giving us noogies,

was rubbing nigga's head get good luck. I also remember my light skin, asked grandfather, saying that too. Obviously it's racist, but where the funk did this come from? Is that why white people want to touch my hair all the time. Open your third eye and enlighten us. Please, thanks, and don't forget to tip your infoil hat at a forty five degree angle. Bree, thank you so much for this

lovely note. Brie, and uh and I appreciate the drugs you were doing prompting this very strange conspiracy theory that I don't think I had ever heard necessarily, I don't think specifically rubbing the nigga's head for good luck. It's the thing that I I've heard over and over again. I've heard rubb a bald head man said, you know what I mean, if they bald, you could slap that skin, and that's fun. That's what we used to do. My

friend Carl. He taught me about this thing that they did when they were growing up called cheese neck where and it's it's not it's not a complicated game. But if that neck was exposed, you slap it and you say cheese neck. And that was the game. And that was pretty fun in college. But yeah, you rub a bald head and maybe you kiss it a little bit. That's that's a good old time. You o't go kiss

that bald head. But rubbing for good luck I had not heard, and so I decided to do as requested by Bree, a little little bit of research, and as it turns out, breathe, this isn't some completely made up theory from your your mom and your grandfather. In fact, rubbing a black person's head for good luck actually traces all the way back to slavery. It's weird. It's like a lot of our history is traced back to slavery. Hmmm.

I wonder what that was. I wonder what happened to us that made us have to come up with a bunch of traditions and weird, uh weird ways of creating culture as a means of survival during that period. It's almost as if somebody was being real fucked up to us anyway, I digress. White slave masters used to rub

their slaves heads, not just as a method of asserting dominance. Obviously, they viewed their slaves as as cattle is, as fucking just animals, and so they would do it as a way of saying, I'm the master, you are are owned. But also they would do it as a way, I guess, of making themselves extra lucky at beating and raping later that day. You know what I mean, I don't know what kind of special luck of slave master needs, Like, oh, I hope I could cut his foot off in one

chap this time, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know why you need luck. You beat the game. You fucking own people in land in a place where both of those things are are pretty much the only things to own. So like, what luck did you need that day? Jebbediah. But either way, the fact that they used to rub these black heads apparently is a very

real thing. Now. Obviously, slaves at the time didn't have the option to reject this unwanted touching, and so it's highly likely that these slave masters were in fact able to at least continue having a pleasant day. Despite physically assaulting a person mere moments before that, you could just rub ahead and go about your business. Nobody could do anything about it, you know what I mean. That's just

the way it was back then. Now, the question that popped in my head when this all came in because it did remind me of those bald heads that we used to rub and kiss back in my youth, and it got me asking whether or not bald heads were somehow serviced or if they service better. Look, you know what I mean, Like, if you rub a a big old fluffy head, yeah that's okay. But if you rub a bald head, god damn it, you just hit the lot o, you know what I mean. So it's letting

hit that line of thinking. And maybe I'm high right now, Bree. I haven't had any drugs, but a goddamn it, I'm high on life and I'm high on skepticism. One of the things that it got me asking is why so many African people, certainly in their depictions in the media. And I haven't spent a lot of time in Africa. I went to South Africa one time, and uh, it was pretty cool and super problematic. What you see is the remnants of apartheid in a way that they do

not tell you about. They say that apartheid happened, and everybody's free now and and now they're equals, and white people apologize, But what they don't mention is that in Cape Town specifically, about eighty to ninety percent of the land is still predominantly owned by white people, and all the black people are sort of pushing into these small pockets and it's all very unfair. And the land specifically

is uh. They have these beautiful wine country areas and you asked the driver as and he takes you out there, how many of these vineyards are owned by black people? And he's like, huh what Uh, I don't know what you're talking about. And it's just very clear that the redistribution of wealth never really happened in this country, despite them making these very public apologies. But again, that's not

what we're focused on here. My question was why do so many people in some African countries have bald heads? And so the question, or at least some of the information that I found is number one, many places on the continent, as it turns out, are very very hot. So it's just easier for comfort and cleanliness, and also resources to shave your head or at least cut it down very low, and that would explain why these lucky

ass bald heads are walking around all the time. The other thing that I found in asking that question is that, apparently, and this is something that that got written up for me, I didn't write this part of it, but I'll make sense of the whole thing. The hair, apparently is the most elevated part of the body and was therefore, back in the day, considered a portal for spirits to pass

through the soul. Pass through to the soul. Excuse me, so like spirits could like, uh, you know how like in break dancing, when you pass that electricity from one arm to the other, and you gotta pass it because if you let that build up inside of you, that's how you get diabetes. But you gotta pass that electricity from one arm to the other. And so apparently that's how like a spirituality sort of works, is that it's

passing through your hair into your soul. And because of the cultural and spiritual importance of hair for Africans, the practice of having their heads involuntarily shaved before being sold as slaves was in itself a dehumanizing act. So these slave masters weren't just shaving their heads because they thought it looked cool. They wanted to get, you know, feel lucky. It was truly an act of dehumanizing them. It was an effort to make them feel less than and lose

even more of the control in their life. The little bit of thing that made them feel like they had a connection to their spirituality, or their beauty or their comfort, they snatched that away too. They seem like otherwise pretty good guys. I think historically we should just keep celebrating Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and all those other fellas. They seem like perfectly reasonable people, except for the fact that they literally stole everything from generation after generation of

p pol. That's said, it is very similar. This act of of dehumanizing is very similar in my mind to how white people will sometimes introduce themselves to dogs before they even greet the people who are walking those dogs. You have you ever experienced this, you the listener at home. I don't know why I'm framing this as a question. Have you ever had that thing where like you're walking a dog and then somebody walks up and they're like, oh my god, you're beautiful. You aren't you a cutie part?

It's like, bitch, I speak English. He can't. He don't even speak English. He doesn't even wipe up his own ship. Say hello to me, and then I may or may not tell you why I named my dog something stupid like Buckley or send your marshmallow. You don't get to just creet my dog without my consent. You greet me, bitch, you greet you look me in the eyes, and you say hello, sir. I would like to find out if your dog is a girl or a boy, even though

that information has no applicable meaning. In my world, it's probably spade or neutered, So truthfully, it's it's been removed of that dignity. Also, should we talk about how owning dogs has a a taste of slavery in it? Probably not. That's why what this episode is about. Anyway, it does appear to your question, Bree about about the touching of black hair. It does appear in some ways that touching black hair maybe an evolution worn from this weird white

devil superstition of rubbing heads for good luck. However, I actually think the issue of touching black hair is a little more basic than that. I don't think it's as evolved as as we would like it to be. I think, truthfully, if I'm being honest, the act of touching the hair, it's more because the hair, just for the whites just seems foreign or odd compared to their own, shall we say, berrilla spaghetti hair? Do you know what I mean? Just

a bi Yeah. I used to love those Burrea commercials, and but some of it maybe it was just me loving white hair. I just see I saw it them like, look at that gorgeous white hair. Looks scrumptious. M m. The point is our hair seems foreign, and the choice to simply reach out and touch it is no different than the instinct, the exact instinct they have with animals

on the street. And they see black people as so lacking in their own agency and their own sort of like self worth, that they presume any kindness, say show, including a pat on the head, would be welcomed. We'd like it. Them reaching their hand out must be sweet to them because of their history of slavery and abuse.

They're like, well, I'm not hitting you in the face, so you probably are just a fan that I even noticed your existence black man or woman, and so I'm gonna touch your hair and you'll be great full, much in the way that a pug would be if I reached out impetted his or her head. It's a gross instinct and it it probably does have a historical context or of people believing in good luck, but I don't think it offers much good luck now, you know what

I mean. I've watched enough YouTube videos of black ladies flipping out at Walmart because some white lady gets bold and touches their hair to know that. Yeah, and ain't that ain't the move no more? You know what I mean. I don't think it ends uh. I think that's how you get fired from your your weird uh financial services job, is you get caught touching a black lady's hair and then she tweets about it afterwards. So, in a long

story short, it used to be good luck. I guess if you are a slave owner and you you wanted to to to effectively shoot a slave in the kneecapsule later, But nowadays it seems like it's pretty bad luck. Although I don't know that white people have fully realized that yet. Anyway, if there's any other physical abuse that you wanted to pitch to me, the listener at home, that you think might be good or bad, look I talk about it you. All you gotta do is send it to me, send me,

send me a note, send me a voice memo. Don't get high like Breee. She's a drug addict. She's Oh my god, we gotta get her into a clinic and and get some help for her. But you, the listener at home, sober effective living your life. You could send me a message at my mama Pott at gmail dot com. And I listened to it, and some of them I respond to. Some of them are fucking nuts, and you guys should be ashamed of yourselves. You should shoot yourself

in the foot. But the others that are more reasonable, I listened to them, and I'll respond to him here on the podcast. And as always, you can follow me at length steink Herman, and most importantly, please follow and subscribe to the podcast and write beautiful notes and reviews. We'd love to hear from you. Okay, Well that's all I needed to talk to you about. By motherfucking miny years, so many years, so motherfucking miny years so, motherfucking mini

your so many years, so, motherfucking miniyears. So h.