The Crown Act: Banning the Discrimination of Natural Hair

This is the America we live in, where a law has to be created in order for a person to have the freedom to wear his or her hair in its natural state and not be turned away from a job or school for doing so.

Growing up, I’ve always heard of instances where people have been turned down at a job or reprimanded at school for dying their hair an “unnatural” color, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to realize that hair discrimination stretches a lot further than one’s actual hair color. I’ve learned that this particular form of discrimination is targeted towards a particular group of people, with a particular hair type. I’ve also learned that this is an issue deep-seated in America’s stained past (and present) of bigotry, racism and it’s idea of an “acceptable” standard of beauty.

Enter the Crown Act.

A new law signed this past Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom makes California the first state to ban discrimination against black students and employees over their natural hairstyles. The authors of this new law say women with kinky and curly hair are sometimes subject to unequal treatment, and can even be viewed as inferior. 

“There's a human element to this. We don't want to diminish people, we don't want to demean people … We have to own up to the sins of the past," Newsom said. "I hope that folks are paying attention all across this country.”

In a recent study by Dove , black women are 80% more likely to change their natural hair to conform to social norms or expectations at work.

Dove executive Esi Eggleston Bracey spearheads the CROWN coalition, an alliance of corporate and community organizations that work to highlight bias that pressures women to conform to Eurocentric standards of beauty.

"What happens is, your natural hair is one way and you think you have to change that to go into a work environment -- because the view of what's professional is different than what your natural state is," Bracey said.  

I can’t stress this enough, it is currently LEGAL to discriminate against a person in the workplace or in schools because of their natural hairstyle in all states except for California. We have to change that.

You can start by signing the petition below to urge legislators to vote YES on the CROWN ACT!