racism

My hair could be legally discriminated against in 3/4 of the states I’ve lived in.

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When gray hair strikes on the day of your birth in a digital image that will be on the internet forever.

On the day of my 36th birthday I posed for a picture with my childhood friend at an event we happened to attend—even though we live miles apart. At the time, I had no idea this image would be a personal milestone that would make me sit for a few minutes and stare off into the distance while recognizing the sheer weight of knowing what finite, frail beings we are, and contend with my own impending doom. 

In this image, for the very first time, the cluster of gray hair I had been ignoring for years, was finally visible and able to be captured digitally. 

The horror. 

After the shock of that realization wore off, I remember that my mother had taught me long ago that women should be proud of their gray hair because Scripture says, “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life (Proverbs 16:31, ESV).” 

In the image in question, I’m sporting an afro much like my parents did in the 1970s. It’s one of the many hairstyles in my ever-evolving rotation. Sometimes it’s the afro, other times it’s two-strand twists, an afro-puff or some sort of up-do tied up with a colorful scarf. I love the versatility of my hair and the confidence I can have with various styles. With that in mind, you can imagine my surprise when I saw an Instagram post a few years ago about The CROWN Act. 

I was shocked to discover that there are groups fighting for it to be illegal for companies and organizations to discriminate against people for wearing their natural hair. In this day and age? This far into the new millennium? But then I slowly started to remember my little brother coming home from a job interview at a popular restaurant chain, discouraged because the interviewing manager said the job was his if he would just cut off his near shoulder length dreadlocs. Other people with similar hair lengths were not required to cut off their hair…but that was what was expected of my brother. 

The Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act would have made that request illegal if it had been passed in that state at that time. It’s currently law in 24 states and still has not been passed in our home state of Florida (Legal Defense Fund, 2024). 

I have worn my hair any way I please in my career so far, but as I am currently in school for Mental Health Counseling, I will eventually be in additional spaces than my role as a youth director. I would be horrified if, in the future, I had to work at an organization that is legally allowed to discriminate against me and my many hairstyles. It frustrates me that I can read news stories about people of color being made to change part of their physical identity to fit an unfair, anti-Black standard. In addition to being unfair treatment of humans who we as a country are supposed to believe are all created equally, there has to be an incredible toll on a person’s mental health when they feel they can’t wear their hair in the styles that naturally work for them. Counselor Education professor Dr. Bradley T. Erford identifies the goal of counseling to be helping people live their lives at the highest level of their potential (Erford, 2018). A world that leaves room to discriminate based on hair type puts limits on the possible potential for some individuals and not others. Dr. Erford (2018) also highlights how closely related the concepts of race and ethnicity are—and I would add that natural hair type is closely related to both. At its core, discrimination against natural hair type is a subset of racism.

As a future counselor, I don’t want to have to worry about being forced to fit a racially insensitive and exclusive professional beauty standard as I move through my professional life—and I don’t want any of my future clients to have to move through the world in that manner either. 

Any human should be able to fully fill the space they take up in this world including the styles that protect, elevate, and showcase naturally and ethnically diverse hair types. Everyone should be able to move through this world confidently wearing their hair styled in a way that makes them walk with head held high—especially those contending with those newly grayed hairs becoming ever so visible in real life and being digitally captured for all of eternity.  

Support the CROWN Act! 

 

See where it’s currently possible to discriminate on natural hair here: https://www.dove.com/us/en/stories/campaigns/the-crown-act.html 

 

Read up on the act here: https://www.thecrownact.com/about 

 

Check out the legalese here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5309/text 

 

Take action by writing a letter to your senator here: https://www.dove.com/us/en/stories/campaigns/contact-your-senator.html 

References

The Bible English Standard Version (ESV Text ed.,: 2016). (2016). Crossway, a ministry of Good News Publishers.

 

Erford, B. T. (2018). Orientation to the counseling profession (3rd ed.). Pearson.

Legal Defense Fund. (2024). America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice. Retrieved July 23, 2024, from https://www.naacpldf.org/crown-act/#:~:text=As%20of%202024%2C%20the%20CROWN,and%20to%20end%20hair%20discrimination.

 

 

The Din

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Why do we have to yell that black lives matter?

Because to some people they still don’t. Because we live in a country built on black lives not mattering, and we are still recovering from that. Because the people saying, “all lives matter,” well see, your lives been mattered. Ours didn’t. To say, ” All lives matter,” in response, is to say, “Your struggle is over, we are now equal and you no longer have a right to complain.” But you see, if we didn’t have to complain, we wouldn’t. If our skin color didn’t have a vastly disproportionate percentage of men in jail, if our young men weren’t pulled over for driving while black, if our hair didn’t incite jokes on fashion television, if our skin color didn’t automatically make us more likely to be shot while unarmed, if our skin color didn’t make us nervous in certain cities at night (and sometimes during the day)…then we’d stop complaining and yelling that black lives matter. So, when you respond with, “all lives matter,” you’re participating in the din that’s meant to drown us out…but we did not stop when we were kidnapped from our original countries, we did not stop when we were drowned along the Middle Passage, we did not stop when we were raped and bred like horses, we did not stop when we were freed but then discriminated against, we did not stop when our Strange Fruit decorated trees, we did not stop when we had to be educated from antiquated text books, we did not stop for Jim Crow, we did not stop when racism grew quiet as a whisper and lurked behind closed doors for fear of being called out, we did not stop when cameras gave eyes to the system that our mouths had been speaking of for years. We will not stop so long as our brothers and sons must sit through the, “talk,” and learn that they will be treated differently because of the skin that they’ve been born with. We will not stop so long as mothers and sisters must imagine bloodied and pulped faces as they wave their young men out the door. We will not stop so long as, “be safe,” has the context of, “if you are stopped say nothing, do nothing out of FEAR for the very air that you breathe. Say nothing, do nothing because regardless of what your rights might be, mama just wants you home safe at night.” So you see, we will not stop, because black lives do in fact matter and there are still people who would prefer that were not true.