A LEGAL TWIST
Now that ‘hair discrimination’ is banned, New Yorkers are embracing their natural tresses
D YMON Davis beamed with pride as she clocked into work at a Queens jewelry store.
For the first time, the ebullient 20-year-old saleswoman was rocking a natural hairstyle on the job: a wavy, voluminous braid-out that was different from her typical silky-smooth style. “I was really excited, and felt super cute,” Davis tells The Post of that winter day in 2013. But her joy quickly faded. A supervisor “immediately pulled me to the back and said my hair was wild and unkempt,” claims Davis, now 26. “She said I either needed to fix it, or I couldn’t work my shift.”
The Washington Heights resident remembers the sob building in the back of her throat. “It was a really big hit on my confidence,” Davis admits. “I knew how much time and work it took me to get my hair to that point, and she said it looked like I just rolled out of bed.”
The dressing-down left Davis so distraught that she quit a month later.
“I realized I could never be myself there,” she says. “I was just so insulted.”
People of color have been forced to regard natural and popular hairstyles — such as bantu knots, box braids, cornrows, dreadlocks or Afros — as liabilities in the workplace. This year, the New York City Commission on Human Rights received seven complaints detailing similar incidents, in which employees were
told that their tresses had to be straightened in order to comply with business standards. In February, the agency stepped in and officially banned “hair discrimination” in the city, granting victims of this kind of racial bias grounds to take legal action. (The cases that prompted the move are still under investigation.)
“Black New Yorkers have the right to wear their hair however they choose without fear of stigma or retaliation,” NYC Human Rights Commissioner Carmelyn P. Malalis, who helped spearhead the legislation, says in a statement to The Post. “Policies that limit the ability to wear natural hair or hairstyles associated with black people aren’t about ‘neatness’ or ‘professionalism;’ they are about limiting the way black people move through workplaces, public spaces and other settings.”
The law was the first of its kind passed in the US, and the state of California followed suit by enacting the same measure June 27.
Now, with the city’s support behind them, Big Apple residents are finally wearing their favorite hairstyles to work and in public without fear.
Television journalist Brittany Noble-Jones loves rocking her Marley braids — thick, woven twists — to both of her current jobs, as a server at Corner Social in Harlem, and as a salesperson at a Michael Kors boutique.
Noble-Jones, 32, has also been demoralized by past attempts to embrace her hair, and her identity.
The single mom — who moved to Harlem from Mississippi last summer — worked as a coanchor for the local Jackson news station, WJTV. Like many newscasters, Noble-Jones had a signature on-air hairstyle that she dubbed the “anchor bob.”
She felt she didn’t have any other options, even though the sleek look caused severe damage.
“The heat literally made my hair fall out,” Noble-Jones tells The Post. “My hair was never created to be straight like that. My hair is coily curls — it’s meant to be picked out with a comb.”
While pregnant in 2016, the journalist pleaded with her supervisor to let her wear two braids tucked into a bun instead.
“I wondered how I would teach my child to love their hair, if I didn’t love my own,” says Noble-Jones, an accomplished reporter who won the Emerging Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists in 2015. “I also felt like my audience could relate to my authenticity.”
At first, he agreed. But she claims that only a month later, he changed his mind.
“One day, he pulled me aside and said my natural hair was unprofessional,” says the reporter. “He said it was equivalent to him wearing a baseball cap to the grocery store, and I needed to be a beauty queen.”
She added, “When I asked him how I should address the change on social media, he told me to write ‘I was told to change my hair back to the way it was because that’s what looks best.’ ”
“I felt ugly,” Noble-Jones says. “I wanted my boss to see that I’m black. I wanted to say, ‘Do you realize that I’m straightening my hair to make my hair look more white?’ ”
Noble-Jones filed several corporate complaints with her Human Resources department, as well as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2018 for workplace harassment, which is still under investigation.
In May 2018, Noble-Jones was unexpectedly fired while out on sick leave taking care of her dying grandfather. She believes the EEOC complaint was the catalyst. (The station claims her hair had nothing to do with it, issuing a statement saying that NobleJones was terminated for “excessive absenteeism.”)
Noble-Jones wasn’t buying it. She immediately filed another complaint with the EEOC for wrongful termination that’s still under investigation, she says. (The station has filed responses to both EEOC complaints, denying her claims.) She even made headlines in January for taking a stand.
“I wasn’t surprised,” said Noble-Jones. “I knew they’d find a way to push me out.”
Fed up with her home state, the single mom packed up and moved with her now 2-year-old son.
Though she has yet to land a job as a journalist, she’s found community and acceptance in the Big Apple.
Her natural hairstyle helps her channel her inner conf idence, she says: “I now feel connected with who I was created to be.”
For Harlem resident Ciara Breckenridge, it’s the new law — as well as stars such as Solange Knowles, Issa Rae and Kerry Washington, who all proudly wear their hair in natural styles — that inspired her to go from long and straight to short and curly two months ago.
“I started noticing these gorgeous famous women changing their hair, and it got me thinking about a change,” says Breckenridge, 34. “In black culture, I’ve noticed it’s become more of the norm for us to wear our hair natural.”
Though her new ’do is accepted at the bank where she works as a receptionist, she’s bummed that she still has to field insensitive comments from co-workers and customers.
“Some people will say things like, ‘Why would you do that?’ Or ‘Don’t cut your hair again,’ ” says Breckenridge. “Others have compared me to Michael Jackson, which I don’t like at all.”
The mom says these remarks dredge up painful memories of being bullied as a child.
“I hadn’t worn it this way in so long because I was always made fun of in school about my hair,” she says. “That’s why I started to relax it — because it was easier.”
For Breckenridge, changing her hair feels like an important step, if not an instant recipe for selflove.
“It’s still a struggle, but I’m accepting it more,” she says.
Still, she — like many New Yorkers — is grateful that choices about her hairstyle are hers to make for herself.
Davis is beyond relieved that she’ll never have to experience the kind of humiliation she felt as a vulnerable salesperson again.
“When the law passed, I felt such a sense of security,” says Davis, who now works as an executive assistant at a bank and sports a mixture of natural styles.
“Knowing I can wake up and wear it however I want is so freeing.”
And when she’s ready to change jobs, she’s vowed to wear a natural ’do to job interviews.
“I want them to see what I might look like on a Tuesday or Wednesday, or every day,” she says.“I don’t want to hide who I am.”