For the Love of Our Roots

Our hair holds stories.

Between Momma’s knees on style day,

The laughter in beauty shops and barbershops,

 The clicking of beads, barrettes before the first day of school

The sizzle of the hot comb before Sunday service and the lather of hair grease to keep our curls and coils shining like the Sun.

It holds the hands that taught us,
the traditions that shaped us,
the styles that helped us feel seen.

But Black bodies already carry so much.

The weight of polluted neighborhoods.
The air.
The water.
The places we work, live, and grow.

And even in something as intimate as caring for our hair,
there can be another layer
another product,
another exposure,
another question we were never given the answer to.

Still, we create.
Still, we care for one another.
Still, we make beauty out of everything handed to us.

But we should not have to carry it all.

Not in our neighborhoods.
Not in our homes.
Not on our bodies.

Our hair deserves care.
Our communities deserve protection.
And our health should never be the price of our culture.

About The #BlackHairExposome Project

The #BlackHairExposome Project is an environmental justice project rooted in one question: What happens when communities already carrying a greater burden of environmental exposures are also exposed through the products they use every day?

Black communities have long faced disproportionate environmental burdens in the places where we live, work, and gather. But our environment does not stop at our neighborhood. It also includes the products we bring into our homes, the salons and barbershops where we spend time, and the hair care products we place directly on our bodies.

Through community conversations with Black women and girls, Black men and boys, and Black hair stylists and professionals, #TheBlackBeautyExposome will explore how culture, societal pressures, access, cost, marketing, and ingredient transparency shape the products we use and how these everyday exposures may add to the larger environmental burdens Black communities already carry.

This project is not about blaming Black people and hair professionals for the products we choose. It is about asking why communities facing greater cumulative burdens are so often left with less information, fewer protections, and limited power over the products marketed to us.

Developed through my fellowship with the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH), this project creates space for Black communities to connect the dots between environment, exposure, hair, culture, and health, and build the collective awareness and power to demand greater transparency and accountability.

Funds raised will support community conversations and events, along with participant support and incentives, so that the people most impacted can be at the center of shaping what comes next.

Because environmental justice should include every environment we move through, and every exposure we are forced to carry.