The hidden harms of race-based hair discrimination

For Dr. Astrid Williams, the news that donning natural and cultural Black hairstyles could soon be a legal right nationwide comes as a great relief.

Williams, a doctor of public health who is the environmental justice reproductive health manager with Black Women for Wellness, believes protections against race-based hair discrimination are vital for the mental and physical health of people of color.

Most Black hairstyles that are deemed more acceptable in work environments call for hair straightening or hair relaxers, William said, adding the burden for doing this disproportionally impacts the environment and health of Black women.

In the midst of the country’s reckoning with its racist past and present, The House on Friday passed legislation that would make race-based hair discrimination a civil rights violation.

The Crown Act, which protects the natural texture and styles associated with a particular race or national origin, would make racially motivated hair bias illegal at work, federal programs, and public accommodations.

Crown, which stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, passed in a vote of 235-189 along party lines. The vote will now go on to the Senate.

While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial discrimination, federal courts have ruled that only Afros, not other natural Black hairstyles like dreadlocks or braids, are protected under the law. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund recognizes natural hair discrimination as racism by another name, but progress has been slow to sign protections against race-based hair discrimination into law.

“Hair discrimination is rooted in systemic racism, and its purpose is to preserve white spaces,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says on its website. “Policies that prohibit natural hairstyles, like Afros, braids, Bantu knots, and locs, have been used to justify the removal of Black children from classrooms, and Black adults from their employment.”

Williams applauds the Crown Act for empowering individuals to wear their hair in its natural state so they don’t have to push their health aside to maintain a standard in the professional realm, reducing toxic load and chemical exposures.

“It’s safe to say that we’re still in the after-effects of trying to maintain a European standard,” Williams explained, adding that this socio-normative pressure influences the products and processes of how Black women care for their hair.

Black women are 80% more likely to feel pressure to change their hairstyles in order to fit in at the office and use a higher number of hair products than other racial groups. Beauty is a billion-dollar industry, and the major hidden cost is health.

“There are so many companies and honestly, even sororities, where when they say, ‘Oh, dress nice, or ‘dress professionally,’ and they believe that professional looking hair is straight hair,” said USC junior Skyer Savage, a sociology major with a pre-law emphasis. “Because we live with such a Eurocentric beauty standard, even natural hair — African hairstyles — are not looked at as professional.”

As a child in predominantly white communities, Savage never saw other people who had hair like hers. Starting in elementary school, her classmates would come up to her, begging to touch her curly hair, a style she described as a “foreign concept” to her peers. Savage said she yearned to have “straight hair, normal hair,” and chemically straightened her natural curls.

Whether it be from the personal products that they use or the environment where they’re living, Williams said, Black women are overexposed and under-protected. Ingredients in personal care products, specifically those marketed for Black women, are linked to cancer, reproductive harm, birth defects, skin irritation, respiratory damage, and other serious health harms.

It is one reason why Black Women for Wellness advocates for increased education on the harms associated with commonly used products and offers free resources like the Beauty Pocket Guide to help consumers make informed decisions when shopping for beauty and personal care products.

The organization is one of 134 endorsers of the Safer Beauty Bill Package introduced in October 2021 by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL 9th District). The package aims to “ban 11 of the most toxic chemicals; increase protections for communities of color and salon workers who are most often exposed to these toxic chemicals; and make ingredient transparency the new industry standard,” said Schakowsky in a press release.

Researchers at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyzed over 1000 beauty products marketed to Black women and put them against over 64,000 personal care products in EWG’s Skin Deep database, a ranking system for the known hazards associated with ingredients listed on labels. Hair relaxers and bleaching products aimed at Black women were the worst-scoring on the list. In addition to causing burns, some chemical hair straighteners have been linked to baldness or a higher risk for fibroids in a woman’s uterus, according to EWG researchers.

Though the federal government has been slow to ban race-based hair discrimination, several state legislatures have taken matters into their own hands. California was the first state to pass the Crown Act in 2019, with a dozen states from New York to New Mexico following suit. But this is not just a U.S. problem. Black women all over the world are subjected to microaggressions, discrimination, and harm — all because of their natural hair.

Ateh Jewel, beauty journalist, diversity advocate and beauty brand founder grew up in Central London and began chemically straightening her coils under her mother’s advice when she was just 8-years-old.

“It was a lye relaxer which is the equivalent of putting paint strips on my head. I had burns. I’ve got scars. I’ve got a thinning patch [on my head] from the amount of damage that was done — literally oozing pus from my scalp like from chemical burns,” Jewel said. “And why did she do that? Why would the parent do that to their child? It is because she was doing what she thought was the best for me in the way that your parents want you to go to a great college so that you can have a great life. She wanted me to have straight hair so I can have a great life.”

Some of Jewel’s earliest remembrances of hair-based discrimination are shopping for products for care for her coils. In the “fancier areas,” Jewel said she would have to jump on a bus to a store miles away to scour for Black hair care products. And the ones she could find were loaded with chemicals that irritated her scalp.

“It was just bargain-basement, cheap nastiness. And that really gets into your self-esteem because you think, ‘that’s my worth.’ I do think beauty reflects culture and values, and growing up and in my 20s and 30s, I saw what people thought of me. And I understood very well what some of the beauty brands thought of me as a black consumer,” Jewel said. “And it was not positive.”

Beyond healing from the products that caused her self-harm, Jewel had to heal from the toxic beauty monoculture that denounced her natural hair texture.

“As a Black woman who loves my braids, I know what it’s like to feel isolated because of how I

wear my hair,” Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri said before the vote Friday on the House floor. “This is the last time we say no more to Black people being demeaned and discriminated against for the same hairstyles that corporations profit from. No more to Black people being made to feel like we have cut our locs just to get a job. This is the last time we say no more to Black people being made to feel like we have to straighten our hair to be deemed professional.”

This is the second time this year the Crown Act has been considered. The bill failed to meet the two-thirds threshold required to pass the House in February under a fast-track process due to significant GOP opposition. If the legislation advances through the senate to Biden’s desk, the President has already shown his support and indicated he will sign the bill into law and looks forward to working with Congress and ensuring that it is effectively implemented.