Powell's Hair being "Filed?" What's THAT about?!

[Linda Anderson]

I found a "snippet view" on Google of Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century: "At times, minstrels even claimed that Negroes had to have their hair filed, not cut.."

From the dissertation "BEYOND BOUNDARIES: POLITICAL DICTATES FOUND IN MINSTRELSY:"

"Minstrel discourse routinely declared that blacks, because they had different physical characteristics than whites, were inhuman and therefore inferior. Minstrel performances stated that blacks 'had to have their hair filed, not cut...'" and so on.

So saying that African Americans needed their hair filed and not cut was part of the minstrels' racist stereotyping. No one actually had their hair "filed." It's interesting that the reporter used that term, in quotes, to describe Powell's haircut. Was it a slang term for the buzz cut or was the reporter implying that Powell had the same type of hair as African Americans?