Solange Knowles keeps racking up well-deserved accolades this year and now the Grammy Award winning artist has been selected as the Harvard Foundation’s artist of the year.
The Harvard Foundation recognized all the themes of race and empowerment in Solange’s breakthrough album A Seat at the Table from 2016. This is particularly true of the song “Don’t Touch My Hair,” which has been used by so many Black women not only to tell people to back off their hair but to back off of societal issues and stereotypes, notes the Associated Press.
The foundation is the university’s office on inter-racial, inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations, and honors the nation’s top artists and scientists each year.
Don’t touch her hair
Solange also recently used “dtmh,” an abbreviation for “Don’t Touch My Hair” after the British magazine the Evening Standard edited out her braid crown for the cover of the magazine.
She posted side-by-side images showing the original braided crown. Te magazine later apologized for the editing decision: “The decision to amend the photograph was taken for layout purposes but plainly we made the wrong call and we have offered our unreserved apologies to Solange.”
It’s no surprise that Solange was willing to speak out so publicly, since she said in the 2016 song that she felt strongly about the issue of Black women in fashion and entertainment not being allowed to be their bold, beautiful selves.
“I think I’ve been on so many fashion shoots and anything in regards to fashion, which is still a predominantly white industry, and also feeling the void of tokenism through my hair being an Afro and what that meant to the fashion world,” she explained.
“So, the song is as much as what it feels like to have your whole identity challenged on a daily basis, although physically touching the hair is extremely problematic!”