National Crown Day celebrates Black hair, urges end to hair discrimination

The term “hair discrimination” would seem to be an oxymoron. After all, hair simply … grows. Right?

Not exactly.

July 3 marks National Crown Day, which celebrates the day four years ago when the governors of New York and California signed the Crown Act into law, the first states to do so. The law prohibits discriminating against a person of color based on their choosing to wear what is known as “natural hair” or protective hairstyles such as Afros, cornrows or dreadlocks.

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From schools to hospitals to the workplace, Black hair is discriminated against. There was the Texas high school student who got suspended because his dreadlocks were deemed too long. (He ended up accompanying filmmaker Matthew Cherry to the Oscars, where the director’s “Hair Love” won the 2020 Academy Award for best animated short film.) There was the sixth-grader whose bullying classmates held her down and lopped off her braids, calling her hair “nappy” and “ugly.” And there was the heartbreaking video of a little girl who thought she was ugly because of her hair.

Protective hairstyles shield strands, especially the ends, from tangling, breakage, the vagaries of wind, and being tugged on or pulled. They are also a way to style hair without using heat or chemical-laden products. The styles include locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, fades, afros, “and/or the right to keep hair in an uncut or untrimmed state,” as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund explains.

Crown Act stands for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.” Since 2019, it has become law in 23 states. In addition, 50 municipalities including New York City have passed ordinances forbidding hair discrimination.

Most recently Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer signed the law, and the bill has just started making its way through Pennsylvania’s legislature. Federally, a version passed the House last year but not the Senate, where Republicans said existing civil rights legislation covers the issue.

Black people’s lived experience, especially women’s, says they couldn’t be more wrong. A survey conducted this year sponsored by Dove and LinkedIn found that Black women’s natural hair is 2.5 times more likely to be perceived as unprofessional in the workplace.

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About two thirds of Black women change their hair for a job interview, 41% of them straightening it, because they feel that it takes straight hair to get the gig. Black women with coiled or textured hair are twice as likely to experience micro-aggressions in the workplace than those with straighter hair, the survey found.

Microaggressions can include things like clutching one’s purse or wallet while walking past a Black person on the street, interrupting the person while they are talking, making an offensive statement or asking an insensitive question.

At least one fifth of Black women between ages 25 and 34 have been sent home from work because of their hair, and 44% of Black women under age 34 feel that they must have straight hair in their headshots. A quarter of Black women believe they have been denied a job interview because of their hair, with the figure at one third for women younger than 34, the survey found.

Even beyond the psychological and economic implications are those of physical health.

“Policies having the effect of forcing Black people to adapt to Eurocentric hairstyles can lead to significant physical harm, including breakage, loss, skin and scalp damage, and the development of trichorrhexis nodosa and traction alopecia,” the NAACP said in a 2020 resolution urging and end to hair discrimination.

Hair relaxers have been linked to an increase in uterine fibroids as well, according to the organization.

With News Wire Services