What do The Crown Act, Dove, & LinkedIn Have In Common?
There has been a lot of buzz about how The Crown Act, LinkedIn and Dove have all gotten together in a partnership to end hair texture discrimination in the workplace.
However, what I realized is that a lot of people don’t actually have an understanding of one important term for what this conversation is bringing to the forefront. So, let’s get clear together!
Part of the reason that The Crown Act even exists is because of texturism, which is different from colorism but a close sibling nonetheless. Texturism is the hierarchical system where straighter hair is treated preferentially and privileged over curlier, kinkier, or coilier hair textures.
Basically people spend their time discriminating against people because of what their natural hair texture is.
In order to enact texturism, like any other ism, power has to be at play. There are a few questions we should be asking with regard to power, as provided by Critical Race Theory (yeah, I know. Public enemy #1 🙄):
What is power?
Who holds power?
In what ways is power being used to benefit those who already have it?
What is power on the texturism when interviewing?
When it comes to hair and a girl tryna get a job (or keep a job) what constitutes power in that moment is that people are able to discriminate against you and not hire you for a job, despite your qualifications, because of how your hair naturally grows out of your scalp. There have been instances where some folk describe natural kinky/coily hair as “unnatural.” Given that this is literally how it grows, there isn’t anything more natural than it, but because whiteness and the features that can center one as white, including straighter hair textures are centered, humanized, and made “normal”, it automatically relegates anything that doesn’t adhere to it as off, weird, and unnatural.
Who holds power where it comes to getting this job and that natural hair?
Hiring managers and the “company culture”. What a lot of places don’t want to say, that we Black women have been knowing, is that when it comes to talking about the company culture, most places will tell you everything other than they like to center whiteness and its aesthetics at the center. When we hear company culture, we know what they mean. And usually the ask is that we leave parts of ourselves at the door so they will hire us and still act like they are doing us a favor. The hiring manager and the company culture can be the thing that discriminates against your being able to get a job simply because your hair looks a certain way and doesn’t fit with the culture of whiteness they are secretly trying to maintain. While your hair did not go to school to get the degrees and learn the skills you have, there is an idea that when people look a certain way, they couldn’t possibly perform the job up to the desired standard.
So, in what ways is the power utilized to benefit those already who have it?
When it comes to the workplace, what happens is hiring managers hire people who already look like themselves. Whether that be someone with white or light skin or someone with hair that they think is beautiful and attractive. Whiteness, in this sense, begets more whiteness!
But here is the thing, we have all been indoctrinated to believe that a person with straighter natural hair is more professional than someone who wears braids, has locs, or has an afro. We have been indoctrinated to believe that people with lighter skin are smarter and more capable of doing work than people with darker skin. We have been indoctrinated to believe that a Black person who doesn’t appear to melting-pot their way into the job market, will be difficult to control– much like the hair atop their heads. That they will bring a darkness, like their skin, into the workplace.
All of these things come home to roost because while we like to separate things out, you cannot really talk about texturism without also talking about colorism and featurism. Because the discrimination that Dove, LinkedIn and The Crown Act is talking about feeds on these other isms to know who gets to slide and who gets blocked at the gate. The whole point is that one's proximity to whiteness grants more privileges to be able to get and hold a job and to be paid well and fairly for that job. Whereas obvious proximity to Blackness, like darker skin, kinkier hair, or facial features that would mark you as Black, make you more likely to face extra discrimination.
Tell me, does that make any sense to you, because it doesn't make any sense to me?
Comment below, what are your thoughts on texturism and the workplace?
