Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

The original skinhead subculture started in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, and had heavy British mod and Jamaican rude boy influences, including a love for ska and soul music.

The United States SHARPs scene has been entirely agitated by the racist overture and have resorted to all forms of anti-racism and anti-fascism to redeem their style and culture.

Many people may confuse SHARP members with racists, since their appearance is superficially similar: shaved heads, denim, lace up boots, button-down shirts and suspenders (called braces).

In a deliberate attempt to reject the growing racist subculture, since the early eighties SHARPs promulgated an anti-racist identity through small amateur fanzine publications like Hard As Nails.

During the pre-Internet era, these publication established a network of likeminded individuals with similar musical and stylistic attitudes, who considered anti-racism an indispensable part of a living skinhead scene.

Another strand of the same Trad revival sought to affirm explicit links with the foundation of Mod subculture and its apolitical, black-positive standards of fashion.

The scooter scene, with its runs and Northern Soul dances, had never gone entirely away; and in the post-punk rediscovery of the past, under the influence of The Jam and Quadrophenia, it seemed a fresh and self-renewing direction for skinhead itself to go in.

By 1989, this Trad scene was ripe for the injection of a cultural influence like SHARP, much as its own appearance had been symptomatic of an American internal revolution in US skinheads' attitudes to race and their own subculture.

This style and demeanour originated from the UK, growing out of the pre-existing mod movement, taking cues and influences from Jamaican ska and rude boy culture.