Damn, I should have known that if I waited someone would come along with a better answer.
Thanks WhyNot. 
Is there anything you DON’T know??? (And I mean that in a tone of deep admiration, not sarcasm!)
I learn something new every day. Is there a budget line item for cocoa butter at predominately black schools or is this something the teachers do out of habit?
I understand dry skin but cocoa butter is the last thing I would use.
Oh, quite a bit! Ask me anything related to math, or computers, or aviation, or history, or public relations, and I’m mum as a stone! Politics and sports and I’m downright idiotic! I’m just a big ol’ biology geek in disguise. 
I don’t have a degree in it, but I’ve just researched and learned a lot of it over the years, and I never throw a paper out! My greatest asset is a memory for where to look up stuff I learned and forgot a long time ago. And I think because I’m not a real “expert”, I can explain a lot of things at a simple level - 'cause that’s all I understand it at. (I hope so anyway - one of the things that’s attracting me to nursing is patient education.) I don’t tackle the really hard questions, I leave that to the people with letters after their name.
It’s distributed out of the nurse’s office, so I would say that it is covered under her discretionary budget money.
Thanks.
I am a person of northern European ancestry, and I use cocoa butter all winter for my flaky, itchy legs and hands. Mostly before I go to bed. I love it. It’s more concentrated than lotions, the first ingredient of which is always water. I found it several years back, and I love the aroma. The first time I used it, my husband came into the bedroom, started sniffing and said “Cookies?” Hey, anything that makes you smell like fresh-baked cookies can’t be bad!
I didn’t know you could get economical large containers of it though. I’ll have to look for it in the “ethnic” section of the supermarket instead of going to the specialty cosmetics store where I first found it.
I do occasionally notice ashiness on White folks, but it’s got to be really bad.
I taught in a predom - well, let’s face it, entirely Black school. I taught elementary, but if I taught middle or high I would probably have lotion and deodorant on hand, because I can see how kids would get crucified if they didn’t have access to it.
There are levels of ashiness. The usual stuff can be handled with Jergen’s. Little tougher on the elbows, you need cocoa butter. If it’s out of control… Vaseline. Cocoa butter is more penetrating than Jergen’s and it smells nice (to me, anyway). In an all-Black group, cocoa butter and coconut oil are pretty common smells. But whenever I had either of these substances on in an a predominantly White group, I would get people saying, “Hey, you smell like coconuts!” (Usually followed by, “but I think it smells nice,” but in elementary school I caught shit for it.)
On preview, what MLS said.
When we lived in Boulder, the girls had a hell of a time keeping the ashies away, with such low humidity. You could hear some pretty cutting remarks about being too “country” if someone was ashy.
It’s funny - since I was 9 and we moved in from the country and I went to public schools, I attended 60+% black public schools. It wasn’t until I became a public librarian with ears out to young people’s conversations that I learned the word “peasey”, though.
This is all fascinating. This is the sort of back-and-forth that makes me love this place.
My doctor actually recommends creamy petroleum jelly or cocoa butter for the ridiculously dry skin my blindingly white self gets. Jergens might as well be water for all the good it does. Even Cetaphil isn’t strong enough. Semi-solid lotions are way better than the thin, watery ones that come in pump bottles.
Something about this whole conversation is beginning to, well, rub me the wrong way…
…can’t put my finger on what.
My husband, Whitey McPaste, uses cocoa butter for his extremely dry skin. It’s cheap and doesn’t smell like flowers, which I think is the big appeal. He always told me that the black ladies at his former workplace mooched it off him all the time, but I never made a larger connection until now. Thanks Dopers!
I generally stick to stuff with a cocoa butter or shea butter base. My favorite hand lotion is The Body Shop’s Hemp Hand Protector; I deal with books all day at work and it works really well for me. (Who knew handling paper all day would be so drying?) When I was dealing with cracked winter skin before I discovered this, I’d use vaseline-based hand lotions like Neutrogena’s Norwegian Formula Hand Cream. Both moisturize really well, but I find that the hemp hand lotion sinks into my skin more readily than the petroleum based stuff.
Here in Cameroon, shea butter is produced locally and used rather widely, as are a variety of oils that I know nothing about. Even if your skin is not dry, the air is so dry that your lips will crack, your feet flake and your elbows turn to sandpaper.
Store-bought moisterizer has more prestige, and empty bottles of moisterizer are considered the most appropriate way to decorate the headboard of your bed. Some people will have dozens of bottles, carefully placed in glassed off cabinets that seem to be made specifically for that purpose.
This explains a horrible Saturday Night Live sketch where Horatio Sanz (Hispanic) played burly singer Aaron Neville (African American) as a TV judge, and he would often sing in his high-pitched, vibrato-laden voice about “Co-ho-ho-ho-ho-coa bu-huh-huh-huh-hut-ter!” and hold court recesses to rub it on himself.
Filing stuff in manila envelopes also sucks the moisture out of your hands.
That Hemp Hand Protector is the bomb. I know I swear by it, as do some friends of mine who have to wash their hands constantly- flight attendants, nurses, and the mom of an immune-suppressed baby. Most lotions wash off the first time you get your hands wet- the hemp stuff from The Body Shop seems to “stick.”
I have also used Heavy Duty Hand Gear, “for hands that do more than wave!” 
The sketch may have been horrible as actually performed, (I didn’t see it) but your description of it cracked me up!
Transcript:
Another Neville/cocoa butter sketch: