A new Color of Change petition says: “Across America, Black people are policed, humiliated and even sent home because employers and peers want to control our expression. We won bills that end hair discrimination in two states, and now we are fighting to end it across the nation.”
Not only can the city force companies to rehire employers who were let go due to this racial discrimination, but it can also levy penalties up to $250,000.
In the first of a new video series from The Root, ethnographer, producer and professor Yaba Blay makes sense of the race politics and meaning of hair as it grows out of Black women’s scalps.