Employing an archival instructional video on how to offer curly perms or body waving services to a white clientele, White Afro intermingles the training video with the director’s mother’s experience of working as a hairstylist at a predominantly white hair salon in Alexandria, Virginia.

From archival footage showing white people how to make Black hair styles for profit, Akosua Adoma Owusu draws out vibrant textures. Weaving in the words of Toni Morrison, White Afro unpicks the tangled knots between capitalism and race to create a flickering polemic on the politics of Black hair.