IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlawss/v10y2021i2p26-d534505.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why We Need a National CROWN Act

Author

Listed:
  • Saran Donahoo

    (School of Education, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA)

Abstract

Discrimination and intersecting forms of oppression directed at Black women influence how they look, live, work, interact with others, and even view their bodies and identities. Black hair has been and remains a target of this discrimination and oppression by obligating Black women to strive toward White beauty norms. Still under consideration in several states, the Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act provides a legislative intervention to protect Black women (and men) from hair discrimination at work, during school, and as they go about their daily lives. This article examines the politics affecting Black hair. The data for this study came from semi-structured interviews with 22 Black women who define their hair as natural. The results indicate that racial history and stereotypes continue to create unachievable standards for Black hair; that Black women continue to encounter discrimination when embracing their natural hair; and that wearing Black natural hair is often an uplifting decision for the women who elect to do so. The fact that others continue to challenge and discriminate against Black natural in multiple venues confirms the need for a national CROWN Act.

Suggested Citation

  • Saran Donahoo, 2021. "Why We Need a National CROWN Act," Laws, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-22, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:26-:d:534505
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/2/26/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/2/26/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gill, Tiffany M., 2004. "Civic Beauty: Beauty Culturists and the Politics of African American Female Entrepreneurship, 1900–1965," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593, December.
    2. Byron D'Andra Orey & Yu Zhang, 2019. "Melanated Millennials and the Politics of Black Hair," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 100(6), pages 2458-2476, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saran Donahoo, 2023. "Working with style: Black women, black hair, and professionalism," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 596-611, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      More about this item

      Keywords

      Black women; CROWN Act; hairism;
      All these keywords.

      Statistics

      Access and download statistics

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:26-:d:534505. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.