The wrestler, Andrew Johnson, received a hurried
haircut after he was told by a referee that his hair violated wrestling rules.
He won the match and state officials opened a civil rights investigation, The
New York Times reported.
Now members of Congress are trying to make sure that
never happens again, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
The Pennsylvania Democrat and other federal
lawmakers are pushing for a bill that
would ban discrimination based on hair textures and styles, which backers say
would improve equity in education, employment, housing and other public
programs.
Their bill, known as the CROWN Act, would clarify
that discrimination based on race or national origin encompasses hair texture
and style. The legislative language specifically names styles commonly
associated with black people, such as dreadlocks, cornrows, twists and Bantu
knots.
Introduced in December, the bill has the support
of more
than three dozen House Democrats, including Evans. No other
Pennsylvania lawmaker has signed on to the bill — or a companion measure in the
Senate — at this point.
“The whole thing is to stamp out discrimination,”
Evans told the Capital-Star. “That’s the message to it all.”
The issue is of particular concern to black women,
whose hair is more likely than white women’s hair to be perceived as
“unprofessional,” according to a 2019 study of 2,000 black and
white women. It was supported by Dove, a beauty company that came under fire in
2017 for an ad that featured a black woman who took off her shirt and
transformed into a white woman.
The study finds that black women are also more
likely than white women to be sent home from their workplace because of their
hair and more likely to report harsh judgments based on looks. Four out of five
said they have to change their hair from its natural state to fit in at the
office.
But women aren’t the only victims of hair-based
discrimination.
“This is about men as well,” said U.S. Rep. Rep.
Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., citing Johnson, the high school wrestler from New
Jersey. Another example: Last October, Penn State football player Jonathan
Sutherland received a letter calling
his dreadlocks “awful” and “disgusting.”
Another high-profile incident involves Chastity
Jones, a black woman who applied for a job in 2010 as a customer service
representative with Catastrophe Management Solutions (CMS), an insurance claims
company in Alabama. She got the job, but the company rescinded the offer
because she wouldn’t comply with a request to cut her dreadlocks.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a
lawsuit against CMS, but a district court ruled for the company, arguing that
its grooming policy did not constitute intentional discrimination because hair
styles, unlike skin color, are not an “immutable” characteristic.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals upheld the
decision in 2016.
A ‘legal fiction’
Wendy Greene, a law professor at Drexel University,
disputed the court’s reasoning, calling the doctrine of immutability a “legal
fiction” that is “rooted in a discredited view of race as biological and
unchangeable.” People classify individuals racially through various
characteristics, including hairstyles and texture, she said in an interview,
noting that such characteristics were used as a basis to enslave people.
Black women in particular have a “narrow way” in
which they can show up at work, she said. Conforming to biases favoring
straight hair can be exhausting, timely and expensive, not to mention a threat
to physical and
mental health. “Our federal civil rights laws absolutely can and should protect
against systematic discrimination,” she said.
Jones sought to appeal the
case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court did
not grant a motion that would have allowed the case to continue.
But that doesn’t mean change isn’t taking
place.
In the last decade, the U.S. military changed its
policies regarding women’s hairstyles in response to objections
of racial bias from members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Policies have improved, but some restrictions remain, according to Samara
Sheff, a spokeswoman for Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore, a member of the
caucus.
Last year, California, New York and New Jersey, as
well as New York City, Cincinatti and Montgomery County, Md. — enacted bans on
hair-based discrimination.
Lawmakers in about a dozen other states — including Pennsylvania —
have introduced similar state-level legislation.
Even so, action at the state and local levels is not
enough, said Lawrence of Michigan. A federal law is needed to clarify,
strengthen and unify anti-discrimination laws across the country.
The CROWN Act will “send a message” that
discrimination is not acceptable, Evans said.
Lawrence says the bill has the support it needs in
the Democratic-controlled House, and said the Congressional Black Caucus — of
which she and Evans are members — is pushing for a committee hearing on the
issue this year.
But prospects on the other side of the Capitol are
dim.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced a companion
measure in the Senate in December.
But the GOP-controlled chamber is consumed with
impeachment for the moment, and the presidential election year will make
bipartisan agreement more difficult to achieve. Meanwhile, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has been sitting on hundreds of bills passed by
the Democratic-led House.
Evans declined to speculate about prospects in the
upper chamber. “That’s an independent body from the House,” he said.
Even if the federal legislation doesn’t pass soon,
the broader campaign to end hair-based discrimination could usher in larger
social change, according to Steven Gatley, a California attorney who
specializes in employment law.
Federal, state and local initiatives are raising
awareness about the problem and could encourage employers across the country to
review grooming policies on their own, he said. In doing so, they may find that
their hair-related policies are out of date, he said.
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