The Lawmakers Fighting to Make Hair Discrimination Illegal

Every Black woman has a story about her hair. When she was growing up, it probably involved having her scalp greased while watching television; as a teenager, enduring her first relaxer; as a young adult, going natural. Each tale is different, each journey personal, and not all of them are good.

There are countless stories—some that have made headlines and many that have not—of Black women facing discrimination at work or school because of their hair. Like Destiny Tompkins, who was pulled aside by her white manager for wearing box braids in 2017, or 11-year-old Faith Fennidy, who was sent home from school in 2018 for wearing hair extensions (the policy was subsequently rescinded following outcry over a viral video of Faith crying on social media). But the issue of policing Black hair goes back much further than these past couple of years and beyond viral headlines.

California state senator Holly J. Mitchell recalls the airline stewardesses from the ’70s and ’80s who were told they couldn’t wear their hair in braids. “Those cases were lost because those styles weren’t really referenced or protected under the law, so the courts didn’t have a basis upon which to opine and rule,” Mitchell says. 

And yet, in the 40 years since that ruling, not much has changed. At times Mitchell has even felt that we’ve moved backward. Take the stats from a recent study on race-based hair discrimination led by Dove, for example: Black women are 80% more likely to change their natural hair to meet expectations at work. Additionally, Black women are one and a half times more likely to have reported being sent home or knowing of a Black woman sent home from the workplace because of her hair.

Mitchell decided to change that with the introduction of the Crown (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act. While antidiscrimination laws now protect the choice to wear natural hairstyles like an Afro, the bill extends that protection. “[It acknowledges that] as a Black woman, my hair grows in a particular way compared to other races of people, and that the style that I wear, because of the texture of my hair, should be protected as well,” says Mitchell. “So that allows for locs, twists, and braids—styles in which natural hair can be styled and protected as well.” The protection includes workplaces as well as K–12 public and charter schools.

Mitchell first introduced the Crown Act in California in January 2019, and it was signed into law on July 3, 2019. Since then, six other states have also passed the bill: New Jersey, New York, Washington, Maryland, Virginia, and Colorado, as well as California, now offer legal protection from race-based hair discrimination. Mitchell credits the Crown coalition and the number of national organizations who have helped to promote the cause for the success, but with 43 states still to go, the fight rages on.

We spoke to Mitchell and other politicians pushing for change about why the bill is so important, particularly in these times of civil unrest.

Assemblywoman Angela V. McKnight (D-N.J.)

It was in New Jersey, where Angela V. McKnight serves as an assemblywoman, that high school wrestler Andrew Johnson was presented with an ultimatum: Cut off his locs or forfeit his match. It wasn’t the first incident of hair discrimination McKnight’s heard about—but it’s what she refers to as her boiling point. “I was just so hurt when I saw that, and I had an aha moment: I'm a legislator and I can change this,” she says. She and her team brought the legislation forward, and Governor Phil Murphy signed it into law on December 19, 2019.

Now McKnight wants to make sure other states follow suit. “We need to start lobbying and talking to our federal legislators so that we can have it as a federal law,” she says. With the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, more people are seeing the injustices that the Black and brown communities face, and McKnight thinks it can serve as a catalyst to help get the bill passed. “We want to make sure that hair discrimination, racial profiling, police brutality, all of that is on the forefront,” she says.

It might take some time but hopefully not too long, because, as McKnight says, she’s ready to move on to other issues. “It still baffles me a little bit that we have to have a law so that people don’t discriminate against something that naturally grows out of our head,” she says. “But it is what it is and we are fighting…. We have to fight for what's right, fight for justice.”

Senator Holly J. Mitchell (D-Calif.)

When Mitchell decided to loc her hair for the first time, she was the CEO of a $500 million nonprofit. The decision to do so, along with the timing, was very much intentional. “Part of my decision to loc at that stage in life was I knew that I was an organizational leader, and I could establish a corporate norm,” she says. “I was in a position of power to do that.” When she made the choice to bring the Crown Act forward, that was intentional as well. “I thought, What a visual image for someone who wears her hair natural to carry the bill.”

While Mitchell says she’s not aware of being personally discriminated against because of the way she wears her hair, she’s heard many “horrific” and “mind-boggling” stories in the past. Stories she’s able to empathize with, an emotion she thinks is needed from more people in order for the bill to ultimately be successful. “I have voted on close to 15,000 bills, and most of those bills I don't have a personal direct life experience with,” she says. “I have never been arrested, I have never served any time in jail, I have never been diagnosed with cancer, I don't have a child with developmental disabilities, but that doesn’t preclude me from reading data and understanding the plight of another group of people. The same should be applied to this bill. Just because you’re not Black, and you have never been fired or not hired because of how you chose to wear your hair, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen to other people.”

Mitchell points out that the Crown Act is about more than “just hair”; it’s part of the global conversation about race that’s currently taking place. It’s also about culture change. For example, the American Bar Association had a segment at its national conference this year on hair discrimination, and Mitchell knows several H.R. organizations that have gone about training (and untraining) professionals on the changing laws. She points to the press the act has received both nationally and beyond: “I often say I can’t legislate morality, but what we have done is triggered an international conversation that will lead to a culture shift.” 

Representative Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.)

Before Congresswoman Jahana Hayes was on the Hill, she was in the classroom. It was there, she says, she saw “young people especially struggle with their personal identity and what their hair means.” She recalls one school that banned braids, barrettes, and beads because they were deemed a “distraction.” She reached out to have a conversation, but it was clear the stigma around these styles ran deep. “It was almost like we were talking about two different things,” she says.

Even as an adult, Hayes says, she questioned her ability to wear her hair natural or in more traditionally Black styles. It wasn’t until she went to Congress and saw her colleagues and staffers with their array of hairstyles that she realized how important a bill like the Crown Act actually is—particularly for the young girls in her small community. “I think it’s empowering for young people so they don’t have to struggle or even think twice about, Is this an appropriate hairstyle for this setting? Because any hairstyle should be appropriate for any setting,” says Hayes. “We should have a menu of options, and whatever we choose should be a personal choice, not something that’s dictated upon us.” 

As traumatic as this current time might be for a lot of people—especially the Black community—Hayes sees it as an opportunity “to shift our thinking, to shift the atmosphere, to change the way we talk about what a person is supposed to look like, and bust up all those myths.” And perhaps most important, it’s an opportunity to try and get things right. “Even if we didn’t realize that things like hair discrimination existed five years ago, we know that it exists now, and we have an opportunity to correct it,” she says.

There’s a lot of learning (and unlearning) happening right now across cultures and across generations, which makes Hayes think back to the discussion on school grooming policies she had all those years ago. “That would be a much different conversation today because I think I would be able to contextualize it,” she says. “And I think it would’ve been received differently.”

One other thing has changed for Hayes. Now she doesn’t think twice about wearing a style like braids in Congress, because, as she points out, “my body of work is not impacted by the way I wear my hair.”

“We belong here, and we make up the rich fabric and landscape of this country, which includes the workforce, our school campuses, and our entertainment sector,” she says. “However we show up, that’s enough.”

Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)

“As a Black woman in America, everything I do is political, and my hair is no exception,” says Representative Ayanna Pressley, who represents Massachusetts’s Seventh Congressional District. When she was a Boston city councilor and later a congresswoman, she wore her hair in Senegalese twists. When she lost her hair to alopecia last year, it reinforced her need to ensure that “no one is criminalized or penalized for something out of our control [like] how our hair grows.”

Massachusetts is part of the majority that hasn’t passed the Crown Act bill just yet, and although Pressley is confident in advocates’ and activists’ abilities to demand change and action, she acknowledges there’s still a long way to go. “It has been my experience that people in power, especially those who have been in power for a long time, are often hesitant to change the status quo,” she says. “But as we’ve seen in recent months, the status quo needs changing.”

Systemic racism reaches far, and Pressley thinks it’s important to address the hurt and harm hair discrimination has caused for Black communities. “When we talk about systemic racism, we must acknowledge the role of hair discrimination in oppressing Black and brown people in our classrooms, conference rooms, and beyond,” she says. “Hair discrimination is a very real phenomenon that contributes to the criminalization of communities of color and perpetuates the school-to-confinement pathway, especially for girls and young women.”

Passing the Crown Act, she says, “is a critical step in affirming racial justice in America.” And what she ultimately hopes is that children—including her 12-year-old daughter—are able to grow up in a world that lets them be exactly who they are. “That’s what this fight is about,” she says. “Ensuring that Black people can thrive in society as their authentic selves.”

Hair discrimination is racial discrimination, period. Together, we have the power to end it. To demand the Crown Act gets passed in your state, sign the petition.

Originally Appeared on Glamour