We’ve all seen the stories by now: Black students are punished for their hair again and again, while Black men and Black women encounter bias in the workplace when the hair that grows from their head—and the styles best for that hair—don’t conform with appearance expectations shaped by and based on white hair.
As the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund explains, “Hair discrimination is rooted in systemic racism, and often helps preserve white spaces. Policies that further hair discrimination advance white Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural norms as the default norms to which everyone should adhere. Hair and grooming policies that prohibit natural hairstyles—like afros, braids, bantu knots, and locs—have been used to justify the removal of Black children from classrooms and Black adults from their employment.”
Natural hair discrimination is an issue that deeply affects Black people not just in the United States, but throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, and around the globe. That’s why Puerto Rican Sen. Ana Irma Rivera Lassén has co-authored a bill with Sen. Rafael Bernabe to address racial discrimination on the island against Black Puerto Ricans who wear their hair in natural styles. This bill covers issues addressed in the mainland movement to pass The Crown Act.
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Here is the translated introduction to the bill.
Senate Bill 1282 - To establish the 'Act Against Discrimination Based on Hairstyles Act'; to establish the public policy of the Government of Puerto Rico against racial discrimination against the various protective hairstyles and hair textures that are regularly associated with particular race and national origin identities (including, without being understood as an exhaustive list, tight coils or curls, locs, bonded braids, twists, braids, Bantu knots, and afros) in the provision of public services, employment, education, and housing in both the public and private sectors.
For those unfamiliar with Puerto Rican legislators, Rivera Lassén’s Senate website bio (translated from Spanish), describes her as:
[an] Afro-Puerto Rican, lawyer, feminist activist and human rights defender. She has stood out in the fight against racism, xenophobia, discrimination against women, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, discrimination due to functional diversity, age, poverty, among other causes.
This cycle, Rivera Lassén is running for resident commissioner, the nonvoting Puerto Rican member of the U.S. Congress. Should she win, Rivera Lassén vows to caucus with Democrats in a sharp departure from the current Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, who is a Republican.
Both Rivera Lassén and Bernabe are members of the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (Citizens' Victory Movement), a new political party founded in 2019.
Bernabe tweeted about a Senate hearing held on Jan. 23, which brought in people who had experienced discrimination for their hair.
Metro Puerto Rico reported on the hearing (translated from Spanish):
Those present showed that their objective is to eradicate discrimination against people of African descent, their hairstyles and their identity.
Ruiz Guevara stated that since she was nine years old she was subjected to hair straightening treatments due to the discrimination against Afros and protective hairstyles on the island. "According to a study conducted by researchers at Boston University, it was determined that the prolonged use of chemical hair straighteners by postmenopausal black women was associated with an increased risk of uterine cancer," she said.
Ruiz Guevara said she remembers "vividly what it felt like" to have the treatment.
"At the beginning, I felt a terrible smell that burned my eyes and at that moment, my scalp would start to burn as if it was being burned. Then, it would start to itch. When I would say, 'It hurts,' they would say, 'That's how you know it's working,'" she recounted.
Another speaker, Lorraine León Ramirez, is the white mother of two Black children. She spoke of her kids experiencing a “bucket of cold water” and discrimination as they began school in 2022.
"That long-awaited first day of school came for my children in August 2022. Now, imagine for a single instant that, instead of being greeted with rejoicing and joy, the school staff would greet you at the entrance gate and that in front of all the other classmates the first thing they would say to you would be: 'I'm sorry, but your afro is too high and you have to cut it back,'" she told the senators.
Feminist community organization Taller Salud voiced support for the bill (translated):
“Taller Salud is taking an important step in the fight against racial discrimination in Puerto Rico. At the Public Hearing of PS 1282 to establish the “Law Against Discrimination Based on Hair Styles””
But there was a glaring issue with the hearing: Almost none of the senators attended. Investigative journalist and author Sandra Rodriguez-Cotto posted an open critique of the poor participation by other senators (translated from Spanish).
“Latent racism in the Senate of Puerto Rico. Today a critical project for black Puerto Ricans is being evaluated and there are only 3 legislators @marialourdespip and the authors @RLSenadora and @BernabeMVC . Where are the others? Silence shows your racism”
Rodriguez-Cotto wrote about the hair legislation for Ey Boricua, with the hashtag #MyHairIsMyCrown (translated from Spanish):
#MiCabelloEsMiCorona : A legislative discussion on 'bad' hair and the current racism in Puerto Rico
Attacking, mocking, criticizing or pointing out a person's hair - whether a student, worker, journalist or even a politician in a judicial process - is a way in which society demands to control black people so that they do not step out of line. Let us remain downcast, fearing actions, without fighting or questioning much so that everything remains “normal.”
But what's normal? Well, the normal thing for many is to have to face systemic racism that starts with hair and how it is styled to go to schools or jobs. Here there are schools where the regulations tell you that the student cannot have a cut or "boina," and that he must have well-combed and clean hair. And I wonder, what do you mean? You think if you have an afro, you don't wash your head? Nor does the regulation allow "threadlocks," or the hair standing from the top back, or dyeing the hair colors that do not seem natural, or are very bright.
...
And what is that about threadlocks? Have you wanted to say dreadlocks and you don't understand English? And what's that hair standing from the top back? An afro?
Incredibly, that's what regulations say in Puerto Rico schools. They obviously institutionalize the discrimination because they do not want black people with natural hair, but tamed, just as slaves were forced. This carries a heavy weight in the lives of many children and young people, who develop fears and complexes. Once they are adults, they can't find jobs.
Rodriguez-Cotto has herself been the target of smears and attacks.
The issue of Black hair discrimination is a painful one. For Black Puerto Ricans and other African descendants, their hair “marks” them as having African ancestry, thus subjecting them to racism, both overt and covert.
We have recently seen this played out in Texas in the case of Darryl George, as reported by The Messenger last month.
A Texas school district superintendent defended the continued suspension of a Black student over his locs hairstyle in a full-page newspaper ad, paid for by an education foundation.
Darryl George has been suspended repeatedly by the Barbers Hill Independent School District for his hair. The teen's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit saying the punishment violates the CROWN Act, an acronym for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” which became law in Texas in September.
The ad was mocked widely.
Afro-Nuyorican poet Mariposa María Teresa Fernández wrote “Broken Ends, Broken Promises” about her Black hair. This spoken-word performance shows scenes of Black folks of all ages loving themselves and their hair.
Hair discrimination has a deep impact on those who face it. “Broken Ends, Broken Promises” isn’t Fernandez’s only poem on the subject. We’re publishing another here, with her permission.
Do Combs Exist?
By Mariposa Fernandez
Combs exist like idiots exist how the day before yesterday's garbage exists
Combs exist as racism exists in the streets of Old San Juan in the 21st Century
Combs exist like prejudice exists how discrimination exists
Combs exists as self-hatred exists and how till this day in Puerto Rico exists the mentality of enslavement.
(translation by the poet)
That same poem, en Español:
Existe peinillas
Por Mariposa Fernández
Existe peinillas como existe idiotas como existe la porquería de anteayer
Existe peinillas como existe el racismo / en las calles de Viejo San Juan en el año 2000
Existe peinillas como existe el prejucio y como existe discriminación
Existe peinillas como existe el odio a su mismo y como existe todavía en Puerto Rico la mentalidad de esclavitud.
I thank Mariposa, who is a member of the Daily Kos community, for sharing her poems with us. Hating on Black hair (and Black people) and the fostering of self-hate of Blackness is something we must fight fiercely to eliminate, along with the systemic racism that breeds it.
Join me in the comments for more, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.