Louis revealed that 90 percent of young men and 40 percent of young women in the city sported their natural kinks, an uptick from the 50s and 60s. A 1972 study of black teens living in St. Wearing an afro became a weapon in the fight for racial equality, as well as a public declaration of self-love and solidarity within the black community. The activist Angela Davis sported an afro as a sign of black power and rebellion against white American beauty standards. The activist Marcus Garvey encouraged black women to embrace their natural kinks, arguing that copying white eurocentric standards of beauty denigrated the beauty of black women: “ Don’t remove the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain!” The “Black Is Beautiful” movement assured black women and men that their skin, facial features, and natural hair were admirable-as is. The first wave of the natural hair movement emerged during the tumultuous 1960s. In cities like New Orleans, however, where free Creole women of color donned elaborate hairstyles that displayed their kinks and coils with an air of regality, the city implemented laws- the Tignon Laws-that required these women to wear a tignon (scarf or handkerchief) over their hair to signify that they were members of the slave class, regardless of whether they were free or enslaved. Enslaved Africans who worked in the “big house,” however, sometimes mimicked the hairstyles of their enslavers, either by wearing wigs that had become popular during that era or shaping their kinky hair to emulate them. In the 1700s, enslaved women who worked in the fields usually covered their hair in head-rags due to the harsh demands of their work. How Did We Get Here?Īnti-black hair sentiment on U.S. These judicial rulings, intertwined with changing social and cultural mores, have created a contentious and uncertain legal situation, with courts and other governmental entities ruling on both sides of the debate. Cases filed by black workers alleging discrimination against their natural hair in the workplace have filled courthouses for more than forty years, yielding mixed results. In 2016, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling and dismissed the case. The company’s hiring manager reportedly told Jones, “They tend to get messy.” The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a suit on Jones’s behalf in 2013 and lost. Jones refused, and the company rescinded its job offer. The offer, however, came with one caveat-she had to cut off her locs. In 2010, Chastity Jones eagerly accepted a job offer from Catastrophe Management Solutions as a customer service representative.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |