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Culture January 31, 2017
The way you choose to style your hair shouldn’t make or break whether you secure a job or advance in your career — but sadly a new study shows this is an everyday reality for black women.
For the study researchers from Perception Institute — a national coalition of social science researchers seeking to combat bias and discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity or anything else — interviewed 3,475 men and women, along with 688 women from an online natural hair community about both their implicit and explicit bias toward black women’s natural hair.
For those who don’t know explicit bias refers to the attitudes or beliefs one endorses at a conscious level, whereas implicit bias is more subtle (and often more insidious) and refers to attitudes and beliefs that operate below conscious awareness.
Perception Institute found in a new study that white women are biased against black women’s natural hair. Oprah Winfrey, image via Giphy
In order to measure implicit bias the researchers developed the first ever Hair Implicit Association Test (IAT) in which participants were presented with various photos including both smooth hairstyles and textured hairstyles (i.e. braids, dreads and afro) — and asked to associate positive and negative words with the images. (You can take the test here).
So what exactly did the study find?
Turns out, regardless of race a majority of people do hold some bias toward women of color based on their hair. A fact women of color have been aware of for, well, their entire lives. Just ask the black woman who applied for a job at Harrods — an English department store — and was told to chemically straighten her hair first.
However it was white women who showed the strongest bias against textured hair (natural) rating it as less beautiful, sexy, and less professional than smooth hair.
“Most people will self-report that they believe they’re good people. They believe in equity and equality with respect to race. But yet they may still hold some bias,” explained Alexis McGill Johnson, a Yale-trained political scientist and co-founder of the Perception Institute to ENTITY. “It’s that kind of paradox that I think is really important for us in understanding why we can believe we’re good people and still see so much discrimination.”
Of course this isn’t the first time this bias has been addressed. In Chris Rock’s 2009 HBO documentary “Good Hair” actress Tracie Thoms was very clear this in an ongoing problem.
“If you don’t understand black hair, you’re afraid of it if you see it in its natural state. And you can’t really see around it,” she says.
Which is why we need to address the issue face on. Truth is this bias against natural hair can have a very real and negative impact for women of color. According to the study twice as many black women feel social pressure to straighten their hair for work, compared to white women. (Recall the story of Cree Ballah, a Toronto Zara employee, which went viral in April after she was told to change her hairstyle because management found her box braids to be unprofessional).
And while the survey found worrying about hair is a common concern for all women, black women were more likely to experience high anxiety about it and felt their hair was a greater social and financial burden than white women.
“I think there is a gravitation toward neatness, a perception of what neatness is with respect to hair,” Johnson tells ENTITY. “I think the challenge here is that neatness is defined based on essentially a white woman’s hair, or characteristics of European hair, as opposed to the way that natural hair grows. So it’s standards that women of color are essentially pitted against.”
How do we fix the problem?
The study did find that millennial women who were part of the online natural hair community reported more positive attitudes toward natural hair, regardless of race. According to the researchers this is consistent with past studies showing millennials identify as progressive, confident, self-expressive and open to change.
“What is most exciting from this study is the finding that black and white women who are part of this particular natural hair online community showed more positive attitudes – both explicit and implicit,” explained Rachel Godsil, co-founder and director of research at Perception Institute. “In this community, images of women with textured hair are celebrated and affirmed.”
In other words it’s possible to combat the bias through regular exposure. But that can lead to a catch-22 if black women feel their jobs or livelihoods are threatened by donning textured hair — and therefore are less likely to do it.
Indeed, the study found black women are well aware of the social stigma against natural hair and this perception is substantiated by white women’s devaluation of black hairstyles. So while it’s great millennials are respecting and supporting natural hair, the other generations need to catch up ASAP.
“Who gets to define what’s normal? Is normal the hair that grows out of your head, and if it is, who’s to say your god-given tresses aren’t normal, aren’t respectable, aren’t beautiful,” says Johnson.
Amen to that!
