CROWN Act Gets Local Support by Greensboro City Council

Zachary Caffo

Elon University School of Law Intern-in-Residency with Aberle & Wall

One example of systemic racism that has been pervasive in our educational and employment institutions is that of discrimination against natural black hairstyles. Specifically, there tends to be discrimination for hairstyles like braids, locs, twists, and knots. In at least one study completed by the Dove company, 80% of the women they surveyed agreed that they had to change their natural hairstyle to fit into my office environment. A study has shown that “[b]lack women with natural hairstyles were perceived to be the least professional, least competent, and least likely to be recommended for interviews.” Christy Koval & Ashleigh Rosette, The Natural Hair Hair Bias in Job Recruitment, Social Psychology and Personality Science, 2020. Another study of how employees were evaluated found that “[b]lack women with natural hair were evaluated less favorably than Black women with straightened hair.” Id. In response to this, a growing movement to ban hair discrimination has centered around state and federal efforts to pass CROWN Act legislation. 

The CROWN Act stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. The Act functions by extending the definition of race to include hairstyles as an immutable characteristic subject to heightened protection. The Act will extend protections through the Fair Employment and Housing Act and through the education code to end hair discrimination in both schools and employment spheres.

In practicality what this means is that an employer or a school official cannot deny an individual from attending school, getting a promotion, or being hired or fired because of the individual’s hairstyle. So, an example of this might be that a news station is hiring a new reporter and they decide that the woman with locs does not look professional enough because of her hairstyle they decide to give the job to someone else. This situation is exactly what the CROWN Act would prohibit. 

The main purpose of the CROWN Act is to end the stereotype that our society has created about what a professional looks like. This is going to be a long and strenuous task, but the more children see adults displaying their natural hairstyles while in the professional workplace the more it will normalize the practice and hopefully begin the process to end hair discrimination.

The CROWN Act was first introduced into California and since has passed in a total of seven different states and the U.S. House of Representatives. The States that have made the CROWN Act into law include: California, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Maryland and Colorado. With five other states having started the process of filing it into law which include Texas, New Mexico, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri. Recently, in North Carolina, two cities, Durham and Greensboro, both city councils have passed ordinances that ban employers from discriminating against individuals based on their hairstyles.

You can support the creators of the CROWN act and their affiliates at their website here and help them convince other states and the Senate to pass the Act and bring an end to hair discrimination.