New state law prohibits discrimination based on natural hair
Issue has been hot topic for women of color after CROWN Act was passed this month
Inside The 2nd Combing Barber and Natural Hair Care in New London on Sunday, Cola Randolph nimbly and gracefully fashioned Melodie Cureton’s long hair into thin braids. It’s exacting work. Randolph’s hands moved rapidly but with the calm ease of someone who has been doing this job for a long time, which she has.
Randolph, who is coming up on her 20th year of hairdressing, is a natural hair care specialist and mostly does locs, braiding and caring for natural curls and virgin hair. That became her focus after she saw the damage that women of color endured — from breakage to burns — by using relaxers to reduce curls.
The subject of natural hairstyles for women of color has been in the news after a bill was signed into law in Connecticut earlier this month. The CROWN Act prohibits discrimination based on natural hairstyles in the workplace and in schools.
Randolph said that for Black women, their hair is their crown, and they shouldn’t have to be ashamed of what they decide to do with their hair or
whether their jobs are in jeopardy because of it.
She said the CROWN Act might “allow us to be who we are — let me feel how I’m feeling. If my hair wants to be curly today and I want to go into work, you know what, just know that it’s never going to affect the integrity of my work, it’s never going to affect my day. It’s just a part of who I am.”
Randolph has a lot of clients who work in corporate America and want to wear natural hair but, because of the positions they have, they put on a wig or straighten their hair.
“They might just want to wear their hair curly and free, but they can’t do that because they feel they might lose their job,” she said. “There are a lot of Black women who are the only Black women in their office, so they definitely feel like, ‘Everybody’s looking at me, (at) how my hair’s looking. They want to ask a bunch of questions.’ It makes us feel uncomfortable because this is who we are.”
When it came time for her to go into a job interview a while ago, Cureton decided to take out her braids.
“When you go for your interviews and you don’t know people, you have to be cautious because you just don’t know (what their reaction will be),” said Cureton, who has a job now and was getting box braids from Randolph last week.
In some of her jobs before she became a hairdresser, Randolph recalls her styles being the topic of the day because she was always doing different things to her hair.
“Our hair is a form of our expression. We love to do a lot of things with our hair. That’s our history,” Randolph said. “... Braids have been around since ancient times. Locs have been around since ancient times. This is nothing different.”
Randolph had noticed that more people are wearing natural hairstyles these days, and fewer are using relaxers. She doesn’t think that accepting natural hairstyles in the workplace is something that should require a law.
“It’s disheartening. When I heard about it ... (I thought): We’re still at that point where we’re still talking about certain things? ... From our perspective, it feels like there’s a lot of progress that still needs to be made — a whole lot of progress,” she said.
Now it’s law
On March 10, Gov. Ned Lamont signed the bill that prohibits workplace discrimination based on natural hairstyles. The styles noted in the legislation are those commonly associated with people of color, and they include afros, afro puffs, Bantu knots, braids, cornrows, locs, twists, headwraps and wigs.
CROWN stands for Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, and similar bills that aim to end race-based hair discrimination have been passed in seven other states, as well. The Crown Coalition, which is the official national supporter of The CROWN Act movement, was co-founded by Dove, National Urban League, Western Center on Law & Poverty and Color Of Change. (Dove is the world’s top cleansing brand, with products including shampoo and conditioner.)
Black women are 80% more likely than white women to feel they have to change their hair from its natural state in order to “fit in” at the office, according to a 2019 Dove CROWN research study. That same study found that Black women are 1½ times more likely to be sent home from work because of their hair.
Just one example of that: A 19-year-old worker at Banana Republic in White Plains, N.Y., was told in 2017 to take out her box braids.
And men can face discrimination based on their hair in public arenas, too. In 2018, a high school wrestler in New Jersey was forced by a referee to cut his dreadlocks before a match.
‘Hair means a lot’
Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, a sponsor of the bill, said her fellow legislators who
are Black or brown understood the need for the bill. Some of her white colleagues, though, were surprised that this kind of discrimination was happening.
In addition to providing legal consequences for discrimination, the law also is an opportunity to educate, Porter noted.
“Your crown is sacred ... It’s heart and soul,” she said. “The way people choose to wear their crown is an expression of that sacredness and what they hold dear to them. Hair means a lot. Some people say, ‘I’m not my hair.’ Yeah, we ARE our hair.”
Reflecting on the passage of the CROWN Act, Porter said she wants people to live in a space where they are free to be themselves.
Porter has gone through experiences herself. Her daughter went to elementary and middle school in Wallingford and was the only Black student when she started there. Porter recalled having an afro when she attended an early parents meeting and noticing how the buzzing room hushed when she entered.
When her daughter had her hair in an afro, other students wanted to touch it, which Porter has experienced herself.
“I’ve had that as an adult. I’ve had grown women just walk up to me and put their hands on my hair ... To me, that’s like walking up to a pregnant woman and putting your hands on her belly. You don’t do that. But for some reason, people think they can still take that liberty,” she said.
In the salons
Brittany Curry owns Love on You in Norwich, which is a salon and also offers natural hair products, and she said, “For so long, so many women have been defined by their hair — brown and Black women — where they couldn’t wear their natural hair, and it was looked at as being unprofessional. So I think it’s a great thing that women can now express themselves and be who they are authentically because, you know, they don’t have to wear a wig and they don’t have to wear their hair in ways that aren’t truly who they are.”
Curry said she has had clients who have had to change their hair for work because it was seen as unprofessional to wear locs, braids or box braids.
“I’ve heard the type of things where when people wore natural hair, they were seen as unkempt ... It’s going to take time for people to get out of a European standard. But at least there’s an awareness, laws are begin passed,” she said. “So it helps broaden the horizon of us as human beings and to really put us in a place where we have to learn multiculturalism. We have to learn how to understand each other’s cultures, no matter the backgrounds. That’s going to really take place in management, where people are going to have to teach multiculturalism.”
Curry said she went natural before natural was popular. She remembered people asking her why she wore her hair in an afro and even asking if they could smell her hair.
She has noticed that the number of clients wanting natural styles has increased. The sales of relaxers has dropped dramatically, reflecting that change.
“People don’t really buy relaxers as much because we’re learning about our hair, we’re learning how to deal with our natural hair, and we’re loving our hair,” she said. “... We’re learning to embrace different textures. We’re learning that there is no such thing as good hair and bad hair but healthy hair.”
‘There’s power in our Black community’
One of the legislators who voted for the CROWN Act in Connecticut is Anthony Nolan, who still vividly remembers when, as a preteen, he accompanied his grandmother to a house where she cleaned. When the white male boss touched her hair and told her to cover it or change it (years later, Nolan can’t recall which exactly it was), Nolan felt compelled to respond.
“I just opened my mouth a bit little too much,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Well, that’s a mean thing to say to my grandmother,’ or something to that effect. She gave me a pop in the face and told me not to talk to the boss or say anything to the boss like that again. Of course, at that time, I wasn’t really understanding it as I do now.”
As a child, he couldn’t help his grandmother in that fraught situation. As a state legislator in 2021, though, he helped pass a bill in Connecticut that prevents discrimination based on natural hairstyles.
Nolan, a state representative from New London, has seen prejudice against certain natural Black hairstyles more recently, too. When he was the youth officer at New London High School, he saw girls crying over the fact that other students said mean things to them about their hair.
Realizing that now, as a legislator, he voted for a law to prevent what his grandmother experienced from happening again, he said, “I was overwhelmed. I was emotional. I called my mother, I talked to some family members ...”
He added that it doesn’t stop there. Housing, education and criminal justice reform are vital and need to be addressed.
“There’s power in our Black community, and you need to know it and you need to stand up and you need to come out,” he said during the signing of the bill into law. “And this is what happens when we do.”
Maria Binet, who works at Binet Cuts, which has locations in Groton and East Lyme and is owned by her husband, Omar, said that the CROWN Act is significant in part because “it’s about embracing what God gave you ... We shouldn’t be changing ourselves just because the place you frequent the most (work) is telling you to change, or peer pressure or society is telling you to change. I think embracing what you have should be the way to go.”