the.com/skinhead

means A person belonging to a subculture marked by close-cropped or shaved hair, originally rooted in working-class fashion and music — a label later co-opted in the public mind to mean a racist thug, though that was never the whole story.

from The word is just what it looks like — 'skin' plus 'head,' describing the close-cropped or shaved haircut that gave the movement its name. It emerged among working-class youth whose style and soundtrack borrowed heavily from Jamaican rude boy and reggae/ska culture, miles from the whites-only image later stamped on it. By the 1970s, far-right groups latched onto the look and the name, and skinhead calcified in mainstream usage into shorthand for racist thug — a meaning the original scene never asked for and plenty within it actively fought against.