On June 12, Montreal police Chief Fady Dagher called a late-night news conference to announce that 16 police officers from the same station were under investigation for racist and hateful acts targeting Black and Arab people.
In a scandal that has intensified the spotlight on Montreal police, Dagher revealed that the allegations include officers cutting pieces of locs from people’s hair, collecting them and keeping them as trophies.
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Charmaine Nelson, a provost professor of art history and the founding director of the Slavery North Initiative at University of Massachusetts Amherst, described the alleged acts as “a complete and utter horrific affront to us in terms of our bodily integrity.”
In interviews with CBC, Nelson and Aly Ndiaye, another historian, described the racist practice as rooted in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, including in Canada — and Quebec. They also broke down how that history has shaped present-day law enforcement practices.
Ndiaye, also known by his stage name Webster, is a Quebec hip-hop artist and an independent historian. He is also the founder of Qc History X, a guided tour of Quebec City that looks into its history of people of African descent and slavery.
In addition to her roles at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Nelson is the founder and CEO of the Black Maple Magazine and a former Montrealer.
These interviews were conducted separately and have been edited for length and clarity.
WARNING: The following includes graphic descriptions of violence carried out during and after the era of the transatlantic slave trade.
What can wearing locs mean to Black people who choose to wear them?
Charmaine Nelson: Locs for Black people are not just hair. So, when you see someone with locs, we have committed to an aesthetic that celebrates the texture and plasticity of our hair. Pushing back against what? Western, Eurocentric ideas of beauty. So, for us to take this step to grow our hair, to groom it in this very specific manner, celebrate it in this way, is in defiance of white racism. We’re celebrating the beauty and specificity of us.
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When you’re a Rasta too, you are dealing with scripture. There’s a covenant you made to never cut your locs. This is a covenant with God, this is a practice of spirituality for you as a Rasta. So, for these police to be attacking and assaulting Black people at the level of cutting and removing the locs, it is a complete and utter horrific affront to us in terms of our bodily integrity, and for many of us, our spirituality.
What is the history behind white people forcibly cutting Black people’s hair?
Charmaine Nelson: Under the law, [Black people were] chattel, they [were] movable personal property. “We’re going to strip them of their status of human.” There was brutality, a systemic corporal assault against Black bodies as things.
And part of that, when we go back to the archives left by the white enslavers themselves, we can see that what became a normal form of punishment was head shaving, to cut enslaved Black people’s hair against their will. And this happened often too between white women doing this to Black women who they perceived as beautiful to their white husbands.
“I will shave your head to the scalp so that you don’t even have control over yourself in terms of how your body looks. That too, I possess as your enslaver.“
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Aly Ndiaye: When you were caught abroad through the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, you were shaven as to strip you from your identity. When they would set foot on the boat, people were shaven, because African people had intricate designs in their hair because their hairstyle was a signifier of status, a signifier of your position in society or marital status. Were you a warrior going to war? For every step of life or society, you had a design in your hair.
Then, you have the fact that because of racism, because of slavery, because of colonialism, Black people’s hair has been seen as something that wasn’t beautiful, that wasn’t up to the standards of the Eurocentric canons of beauty. So, people had their hair shaven, had their hair straightened, and would be judged upon their hair, their hairstyle, to this day, like an Afro being seen as not normal or not professional.
To get back your identity, let’s say in the 1950s and 1960s, people started to wear their Afro during the Black Power movement. There was this whole way to shape your identity closely linked to your hairstyle, so people would wear an Afro, would wear cornrows because it’s beautiful and it’s historical, also. People trying to get back their identity, their African identity that was stolen, that was dehumanized.
Where does the racist practice of collecting Black people’s hair as trophies come from?
Charmaine Nelson: On the heels of slavery, what started in places like the U.S. and other places in the Americas is a rise in lynching. A rise in white people, mobs getting together and saying: “This particular Black person – usually a man or a boy – we’re going to kill him tonight as entertainment.” By the time photography came around, [white mobs] were taking pictures of this and they were turning the photos into postcards and they were putting a stamp on them and mailing them. When they would murder the Black person, they would usually then set him on fire and they would take mementos from his body, collectibles of his body, home with them.
Aly Ndiaye: It was a sign of body count, a way to humiliate the enemy or to post about your ‘superiority.’ When [Black people] were lynched, the lynchers with the lynch mob would afterward fight: “Who gets a finger? Who gets a finger bone? Who gets a toe?” People would cut off the genitalia and keep them. And to this day, people would open the drawers of their grandpas and find a human bone, which is a keepsake from that lynching.
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Historically, what role has law enforcement played in policing, controlling and inflicting violence on Black people in Quebec?
Charmaine Nelson: The architecture of policing in the West, in the Americas comes out of slavery. The sheriffs [in Montreal and Quebec City] had their hands all over slavery because the sheriff was in charge of the jail. And when an enslaved person would escape, the sheriff had the duty to try to hunt down that enslaved person and return them to the white enslaver from whom they’d escaped. When someone went bankrupt, their estate was handed over to the sheriff, and if you were an enslaver, that meant the enslaved people literally went to the sheriff and the sheriff decided who they got sent to as payment for the debt you owed. Law enforcement’s hands were all over slavery. Law enforcement was embedded in protecting enslavers and securing their rights to continue to enslave people of African descent. So, Black people, from the inception, were the hunted, were the criminalized and the criminals.
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What does this history reveal about these allegations?
Aly Ndiaye: Now, in the 21st century, when a cop decides to keep the loc of a Black person that has been harassed, this is linked to the lynching, this is linked to slavery. This is linked to racism and a way to assert your quote unquote superiority, to be able to boast about your racist acts. And also it’s a way to maintain your body count. “So how many, how many locs do you have?“ Instead of bridging the gap, they are widening the gap.
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This act isn’t in a vacuum. This is something that is tied to slavery, that is tied to colonialism, that is tied to racism, even though those cops, maybe they weren’t like: “We’ll bring it back to the days of slavery.“ But still, the actions are tied to that long history of violence and the history of police, of policing Black lives. They will untie it from its history because this is always what is going on. They’re always trivializing things. I’m eager to see what will be done with those people from the Poste 39. But I don’t expect anything.
