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A school bans “edges,” a graduation blocks braids, a child with locks is told to stay home—on the surface, they’re dress code debates. Look closer and you see a lineage of power: colonial respectability, “imperial cleanliness,” and the policing of Black and Brown bodies through hair. We sit down with artist, educator, and gender rights advocate amilcar sanatan to map how grooming rules took root, why they persist, and what it takes to change them without sacrificing learning or dignity.

We unpack the language of “neat,” “professional,” and “acceptable,” tracing it from plantation hierarchies to modern handbooks. Together, we connect scholarship and lived experience—Rastafari resistance and the Coral Gardens legacy, the gendered training of girls into silence and boys into “tidiness,” and the quiet violence of sending students home over texture or style. Along the way, we explore key legal and cultural flashpoints from Trinidad and Tobago’s school hair code to Jamaica’s Kensington Primary case, and why each decision matters for access to education, equal employment, and human rights.

This conversation doesn’t stop at critique. We highlight grassroots wins and everyday acts of repair: natural hair days led by young teachers, principals revising codes to center hygiene and safety rather than assimilation, and families rethinking what professionalism looks like in Caribbean contexts. The goal isn’t disorder—it’s dignity. Keep students in class. Measure readiness by curiosity and conduct, not curls. Celebrate cultural expression while maintaining clear, fair standards that actually support learning. If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for more Caribbean history and culture, and leave a review telling us how grooming rules shaped your school or workplace. Your stories move this work forward.

amílcar peter sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator and activist. He is from Trinidad and Tobago and currently working between East Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Helsinki, Finland. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: About Kingston (Peekash Press) and The Black Flâneur: Diary of Dizain Poems, Anthropology of Hurt (Ethel Zine & Micro Press).

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A building can be history you can walk through, and in the Caribbean those stories are contested, resilient, and alive. With Professor Dahlia Nduom, we explore how colonial styles, tourist imagery, and community ingenuity have shaped what gets built and what gets erased as we move from great houses to tenement yards, spaces that encode climate logic, kinship, and care. We unpack how imagery once glorified plantations while hiding the homes of the enslaved, and how vernacular elements later became tropical décor, stripped of context. That’s where practice preservation matters: teaching Spanish walling and thatching; documenting craft with computation; and elevating incremental, remittance-powered building as a valid design strategy. We also look at resilience after disasters while spotlighting community organizations and design labs translating old intelligence into future-ready methods.

Policy sits at the heart of who gets to belong. We talk land tenure and how post-disaster aid often clashes with customary ownership. The path forward blends community-led design, climate-appropriate materials, and practical toolkits for safer self-building, while recognizing tropical modern works that carried post-independence identity. It’s a future where technology serves tradition, and preservation centers methods over façades. Listen to rethink what counts as “good architecture,” how culture and climate shape better choices, and discover ways to support people rebuilding with dignity.

Dahlia Nduom is a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Architecture. She received a BA in Architecture and Visual Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Arch from Columbia University. A licensed architect and educator, her work is rooted in history, culture, and perception and their impact on architecture across locales in the United States, Ghana, and the Caribbean. She has published and presented her work nationally and internationally, most recently at the Octagon Museum in Washington, DC. Her work has been recognized with the National Organization of Minority Architects’ Honor Award: Unbuilt Category (2017), the AIA DC Architect Educator Award (2022), and she was named a 2024 Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s Emerging Scholar.

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A storm can level homes, but it also reveals what we stand on. Hurricane Melissa’s record winds and devastating surge tore through Jamaica and neighboring territories, but the story is bigger than wind speed—it’s a living history of language, science, memory, and community that runs through the Caribbean. We trace the roots of “hurricane” to Taino and Kalinago cosmologies, revisit Cuba’s pioneering forecasting under Father Benito Viñez, and connect these legacies to today’s urgent fight for climate justice and long-term recovery.

I open up about the shock of seeing beloved places underwater and the ache of waiting on WhatsApp for family updates from afar. This episode offers more than reflection; it’s a roadmap. You’ll hear concrete ways to help now and sustain support later, from vetted donations and mutual aid to advocacy for loss-and-damage financing and regional capacity-building. If the Caribbean sits on the front lines of climate change while contributing the least to its causes, then fairness means resources, protection, and policy that match the stakes. Listen, share the links, and stand with communities rebuilding today for a safer tomorrow. If this conversation moved you, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it on so more people can act with us.

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Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!

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Produced by Breadfruit Media