Talk:Durag

message: Welders Use 'em to keep spatter(molten metal) from getting in our hair.They are on sale at every welders supply store...and 'wave cap' should redirect here.4 T~i~l~d~e~s(7/5/2007_@4:08pm)
As a legally bald guy, I use them for sweat-management as well as UV protection.  Most manufacturers tout these points as well. 71.164.218.146 (talk) 17:35, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate Use 

message: Why was the reference to the term "dude rag" removed from the durag article by 206.131.130.190 on May 23, '05?  Alternative names and spellings are greatly significant to the topic; on the streets in my area, the term "dude rag" is used more commonly than any other.  The name "do-wrap" may also be of interest.
Furthermore, I am opposed to the racial delineations made the article.  The reference to "African-American men" may seem appropriate in the context of hair.  However, the cultural group among whom the durag is currently popular is not limited to any race.  I have seen European-Americans wearing durags, and indisputably, Asian-Americans also wear them.  In this case, The word "Ebonic" would be far more appropriate-- and far, far less offensive.  I wasn't there in the beginning of durags, but I speculate that, even then, they were worn by members of other races.  Regardless, hair-texture and culture are the relevant details here, not race.  Such unnecessary racial distinctions only serve to exaserbate trivial differences between essentially similar people, effectually driving them apart.
--Jack "Jaeger"
You sound like you're making a few "racial deliniations" of your own, mein freund.
Hair texture is certainly not something defined by race. There a good number of Caucasian, Hispanic, and Southeast Asian people with coarse hair. Hair texture isn't a factor in it's use, and by your own submission, neither is culture. Unless I suppose it's a case of cultural appropriation.
- Jesus.
I think there must be some discussion about the history of this word.  The spelling of this word that seems most intersting is probaly 'do-rag which gives the impression that it may have come from "hair-do-rag" which is somewhat justified by the article as well ("...hold chemically processed hair-dos in place...").  Certainly the spelling of the "word" durag gives me little or no help in determining the history of this word or of the wrap it describes.
Best I can tell from Google, durag is not the most popular spelling.  Here are my  (unscientific) findings:
* durag - 17,100 pages
* do-rag or doo-rag - 42,600 pages
So, does anyone have a justification for this spelling or a certain history of this term?
One last item:  The term Ebonic Youth seems to be a completely new and possibly made-up term used only in this article.  The previous commenter (Jack "Jaeger") mentions it as being an appropriate term, but I cannot find any mainstream reference to the term being used like this.  The term Ebonics is, of course, well used and there is a significant entry which is, importantly, missing even the word ebonic let alone a term like Ebonic Youth.
I myself am not sure who adopted the fashion trend in the 70s and 90s, but I submit it is not useful to make up a new term just to avoid the term African-American men.
-- Scott
"Ebonic youth?" You know better than that. --FuriousFreddy 15:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Article Title

message: The article implies that gang colored do-rags are a Holywood invention. Is that true or are/were they really used this way. Rmhermen 16:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Actual gang color use

message: The bit with the Civil-War era "Dew Rag" seems a bit weak to me... can anyone confirm this or provide references?
Jack says:
Your comment should at least be signed as "anonymous".  Er... yuk yuk yuk.  Yeah, the nature of that suggestion really calls for some sort of verification.  I'd personally find it kind of amusing to know what kind of source this idea came from...
--Jack 06:24, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dew Rag?

message: The etymology already presented seems distinctly phony. Acronyms account for far fewer words than folk explanations suggest.
The OED and Merriam Webster both state the word comes from do in the sense of "hair-do", which also chimes with an explanation given further into the article.  The first use of the word from those sources is 1968 but that is describing the decline of the "do-rag", so it seems likely it is earlier.
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00319472?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=do+rag&first=1&max_to_show=10
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/do%20rag
Both dictionaries suggest that "do rag" is the accepted spelling (along with less prestigious dictionaries), but urban dictionary suggests du rag as an alternative. I'm not sure that this is terribly important though.
Anyway, if nobody really objects I'm going to scrap the vietnam war stuff and replace it with the OED/M-W sourced facts.
OcelotIIX (talk) 08:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: can anyone make an assumption about how many (total) Du Rags are sold in the U.S every year?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.160.204.208 (talk) 14:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Du Rag Sales? 

message: "Do-rags date back to the 1800s when freedom fighters put them under their hats to protect their necks from the sun."  Source please? Why the euphemism?  Are we talking about revolutionaries in Cuba, or what? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 20:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  freedom fighters 

message: As an Army veteran, I thought I heard somewhere that "d.o." stood for "drive-on" rag, as in the acronym FIDO, in which the last two letters stand for drive on. Have any other veterans heard of this usage?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:F731:2010:DD3A:BE03:8818:FD5D (talk) 17:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This is undoubtedly a false etymology. Stories like this become popular because they seem plausible, and therefore aren't fact checked. "I heard once..." or "Somebody told me..." or (as your say) "I thought I heard somewhere that..." are phrases to be alert to. Senator2029 【talk】  14:53, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do-Rag - Vietnam War connection? 

message: I've seen sources saying that Cleon the leader of The Warriors in the 1979 movie of that name wore a durag, though seemingly not a traditional type.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr gobrien (talk • contribs) 09:45, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular Culture 

message: Regardless of where I've seen the term commonly referred to as (Du-rag), I do think that the title and primary spelling in the body should be consistent. It strikes me as odd that the title has 'Do-rag' as a primary spelling, but the entire body, without fail, insists upon 'Du-rag.'
It just comes off as kind of sloppy and inconsistent to me.
-$omebody
This is a completely valid, common-sense point that no one has responded to, and I don’t see any explanations for the mismatch or actual discussion on the topic. Unless there’s a reason I am not seeing, I propose the article be retitled “Durag”. Butterboy (talk) 15:50, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do-rag in Name, Du-rag in Body? 

message: Hope I'm doing this right.  Instructions are very hard to find here.
My (white) grandmothers, one from Britain and one from Germany, both wore them, as did all the women of their class and time, while working.  And they called them dew rags.
.
They called it a 'dew rag' because in those days (according to my British granny) horses sweated, men perspired, and women 'got dewy' - so the rag was to absorb "the dew of their brows" as they did their work, whether it was housework, farm work, or field work.
It is NOT a black thing, its a working woman thing - and a world-wide working woman thing at that, but mainly inspired by need and the name inspired by the British lower-class working women as a swipe at Victorian (?) attitudes towards everyday bodily functions like sweating.
I'm in my 70s, and we are not early breeders, so my British granny was already fairly elderly when she explained this to me in the early '50s.  My German granny didn't know the derivation of the name, and may have called it something else in German, but when she spoke English it was a dew rag for her too.
Even in the '50s it had become a sort-of shameful thing to wear and no one talked about them. It was such a status indicator, but not in a good direction, and I think its waning use in the '40s and '50s among the white population was also aided by the fact that running water being put in homes meant you could comfortably bathe and wash your hair more often.
 
As the usage faded from most white society, it stayed with black women and was soon taken up by black men for various reasons, it seems.  I'm not as familiar with current use as it seems to be fashion more than utility.
CybercroneCA (talk) 15:22, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Family experience with term

message: The book Nevertheless, She Wore It (2020) has a chapter on the durag. Nosferattus (talk) 22:53, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable sources 

message: I see no references to the 1800s in this article. Last time I checked that was the 19th century. MalMcIntoch (talk) 18:49, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  19th century