By: Lynise Olivacce
From Bantu knots to knotless braids — statistics show that common hairstyles of Black women are not being embraced. When a Black woman wears these creative hairstyles, it's more than "just hair" as one might think. It tells a story — it gives Black women the room to defy society's beauty standards in places like the workplace and schools. Hair discrimination is something that has been pervasive for years and extends from the harsh history that Black people had to undergo for centuries.
From the times of enslavement, the Jim Crow era, and the afro hairstyle in the 1960s and 1970s during the Black Power Movement, a Black person's hair holds a deep history.
The narrative of empowering Black people’s crowns continues to persevere through activists, hair stylists, scholars, and lawyers seeking social justice across the country.
Brittany Dawson, the owner of Salon As I Am in Totowa, New Jersey, finds it disgraceful that Black people are subject to prejudices and institutionalized racism for the hair they were born with.
“We seemingly have come so far from racism and prejudices, you see that the residual of that still lingers, and unfortunately, we’re not as far as we think we are,” Dawson says.
Vice President for Interdisciplinary Initiatives and African-American Studies Professor at Georgetown University, Dr. Soyica Diggs Colbert, says that the two primary factors people see regarding Blackness are skin and hair texture.
“Thinking about how Black people have been reversed owned in the United States and then have been subsequently policed, and a lot of that has been situated around the body right,” Dr. Colbert says. “So if we think about the history of enslavement, was all about commodifying Black people's personhood.”
Prominent Black figures like Angela Davis and Huey Newton during the Civil Rights Movement embraced their hair, specifically wearing an afro, to defy people who abused their authority in an attempt to make Black people feel inadequate and to ultimately regain autonomy of their body.
The hurtful truth for the Black community is that the common theme of hair discrimination infiltrates throughout generations, and is something that can be found in different cases in the United States, such as with the recent case involving Chian Weekes-Rivera.
Weekes-Rivera, a veteran of the police department in Maplewood Township, New Jersey, recently claimed that she was discriminated against for her Bantu knot hairstyle at her place of employment after being subjected to disciplinary action. In response, Weeks-Rivera filed a lawsuit saying that the disciplinary action violates New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD). This law prohibits discrimination against gender, hair and individual characteristics.
Similar to the LAD is the momentum-gaining law known as The CROWN Act. Founded by Dove and led by the CROWN coalition, the CROWN Act was made to protect people against discrimination on race-based hairstyles.
Even though the CROWN Act has passed, Jill Miller, an associate attorney at Pearce Law, LLC, says that there are different stages for state legislation, and policies at schools and workplaces have to catch up with the CROWN Act.
“New Jersey recently updated its law against discrimination,” Miller says. “As part of that Crown Acts wave, what they've done is they've amended the definition of what it means to discriminate against someone in the state of New Jersey, and now it includes ethnic hairstyles as well as protective styles. So that’s how New Jersey has woven The Crown Act into its existing legislation.”
Miller emphasizes that this law allows people who experience hair discrimination to move forward with action to receive justice.
The 2023 CROWN Act Workplace Research Study reports that “while progress has been made, race-based hair discrimination remains a systemic problem in the workplace – from hiring practices to daily workplace interactions – disproportionately impacting Black women’s employment opportunities and professional advancement.”
As Dr. Colbert says, people commonly identify Blackness with skin color and hair texture, and throughout American history, Black people didn’t have full autonomy over their own bodies. Thus, Black people fought to regain their identity and autonomy, through “self-fashioning” and “self-styling” after emancipation, she says. The United States has a long history interconnected to the subjugation of Black hair, from the eras of enslavement, Jim Crow and today where discrimination attempts to dictate “tolerable” ways to portray Black hair in society.
“Schools, jobs, institutions, policing requiring insisting that Black people wear their hair in a certain way, is exerting a level of force to demonstrate control over the Black body,” Dr. Colbert says.
In other words, Black people having the choice to straighten their hair one week, then revert to its natural state the next week, still shows that they have autonomy over their bodies because they have the choice. However, Black people continuously facing hair discrimination demonstrates that more work arguably needs to be done for Black people to have full autonomy over their bodies in settings like the workplace, schools and other institutions.
With the power she has through her hair tools, Dawson aims to wash away this false narrative of Blackness being perceived as “unprofessional” or “unkempt.” The story behind the naming of Salon As I Am stems from a poem Dawson wrote in one of her church ministries, with the goal in mind to remind her listeners that they are beautiful as they are. As a hairstylist who specializes in all textures of hair, she tells her clients she enhances the beauty that already exists in them.
“Man, your hair — is beautiful,” Dawson says. “And what I would say to my younger self is that – don't allow anyone to box you into their idea of what pretty is. Of what acceptable is.”
About Lynise Olivacce
My name is Lynise Olivacce and I am a Journalism and Digital Media major and Criminal Justice & Justice and Families double minor at Montclair State University. At The Montclarion, an independent student media source, I have had the honor of becoming a Staff Writer, Assistant Photo Editor, Director of Photography and Editor-in-Chief.
Along with having the prestigious opportunity and responsibility of taking on leadership roles at The Montclarion, I have had the honor of receiving the Rising Red Hawk Award, Linda and George Hiltzik Scholarship Award, Two NBCU Academy Scholarship Awards and the Marc and Lila Rosenweig Endowed Scholarship Award.
My hard work and perseverance led me to my NBC New York Intern position at NBCUniversal.
I have developed an affinity for writing and visual storytelling for years and continue to cover what intrigues and challenges me. I intend to continue to do this through my journalism and digital media career and I dream of working for a media organization one day.