CLEVELAND, Ohio – When local researcher Chinenye Nkemere was in law school, she wore her hair in a weave so it could be straightened to mirror most of her classmates and avoid criticisms that she should look more professional – as if her braids somehow made her less professional.
“I ruined my hair,” she said of the experience. “I never keep my hair straight like that and it was because I was told keep your hair straight so that you look like the other attorneys.”
Ladosha Wright, who owns Cleveland Heights salon Reverence Design Team, can recount numerous examples of Black men and women coming to her in tears because they’d been asked to change their hairstyle for work. Locs, braids and cornrows had to be let out; more natural hairstyles, like afros or twist-out curls, were covered up in favor of hairstyles that employers deemed “more professional,” “more neutral,” or “less ethnic.”…