Students Unbraiding Teacher's Hair Controversy

Submission 15,475

Part of a series on TikTok. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Students Unbraiding Teacher's Hair Controversy refers to discussions and jokes about a viral video showing TikToker and teacher @thilluminatin1 getting his hair unbraided by a group of female students in class as he works on his computer. The video was shared by the male teacher, eventually resulting in his firing. These events led to discussions on Black Twitter about whether the teacher's actions were appropriate or not, with some calling the unbraiding a way for him to bond with his students and others criticizing him for extracting unpaid labor from female students during school hours.

Background

On May 7th, 2024, TikToker^[1] @thilluminatin1 posted a video showing him working on his laptop in the classroom as a group of female students unbraid and detangle his hair. The video was captioned, "Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Teaching is a work of heart," and gathered over 6 million views and 770,000 likes in a week (seen below).

Online Reactions

On May 8th, 2024, X^[2] user @TanelleIrene reposted the video with the caption, "Black parents tap in! Would you be okay with your daughter unbraiding her teacher’s hair? Is this appropriate?" The post was quoted by various X users weighing in with their opinions on the issue.

On May 8th, X^[3] user @xxdbreezyxx quoted the post writing, "I’m watching this and didn’t even realize that’s my little sister in the background. She said that he’s her favorite teacher but today they were all forced to write statements and he may get fired…" and gathering over 90,000 likes in five days (seen below, left).

On the same day, X^[4] user @Jo2timess posted various videos of female teachers having their hair braided and dyed by their students, gathering over 20,000 likes in five days (seen below, right).

On May 9th, 2024, the video was discussed on the subreddit /r/blackladies^[6] and the Instagram page @theshaderoom, the latter receiving replies from people claiming to be the parents of the girls in the video (seen below).^[7]

On May 10th, 2024, the teacher posted a video to his TikTok,^[5] saying that he was fired from his job. The video gathered over 1 million plays and 60,000 likes in two days (seen below).