Reading Jonathan Jansen's column last week "Kroes or not, hair is a race thing" made me laugh as I have very thick and very curly dark hair even though my ancestry seems, from all available evidence, to emanate fairly and squarely from northern Europe. When I was in Standard 9 at a posh girl's school in Johannesburg in 1974 we had a "liberal" history teacher who, while teaching us our prescribed history syllabus, would point out the absurdities and iniquities of apartheid whenever possible. We all, with great hilarity and incredulity, performed the "pencil test" on our coiffures, and my pencil was the only one in the class that failed to fall to the ground but stuck defiantly in my mop.Around that time I tried to straighten and flatten it - but luckily the '80s arrived with the Afro and things improved. But it wasn't really about race - it was a fashion thing.And the teachers would not tolerate long hair that wasn't tied back, but they were comfortable with my mop - and as long as our nails weren't painted or we avoided earrings we were safe from detention and public humiliation.Thanks for the great column - I look forward to it very much.Caroline Voget, Constantia, Cape Town..