An anti-discrimination campaign focused on black people’s hair has won the backing of one of the UK’s biggest employers, Unilever, which has pledged to protect workers with afros and dreadlocks.
The manufacturer, which makes Dove soap and Magnum ice-cream, has signed a new code intended to end bias against students and employees with hairstyles associated with their racial, ethnic, and cultural identities.
A survey by the founders of the Halo Code found one in five black women feel societal pressure to straighten their hair for work and more than half of black students have experienced name calling or uncomfortable questions about their hair at school.
“There is a widely held belief that black hairstyles are inappropriate, unattractive, and unprofessional,” said Edwina Omokaro, 21, one of the organisers of Halo. “We’ve been suspended from school, held back in our careers, and made to feel inferior by racist policies and attitudes.”
Halo said the result is that black people are sometimes “forced to choose between their education or career on the one hand, and their cultural identity and hair health on the other”.
Unilever’s move came as 90 children’s charities in England said in a submission to the United Nations committee on the rights of the child that black children continue to suffer persistent discrimination, including over-representation in school exclusions and the criminal justice system. They are more likely to be poor, with 46% of children in black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) families living in poverty compared to 26% of children in white British families, said the Children’s Rights Alliance for England.
Criminalisation of black children has increased in the last decade and BAME children now make up half of the child population in prison – of which 28% are black. The report criticises the fact that there is no cross-government strategy for preventing and addressing systemic racism and race discrimination faced by young black people in England.
The Halo Code is an example of activists asking employers and academic institutions to take steps themselves. The idea is that institutions adopting it are signalling to black people that their hair will be no barrier.
Omokaro said that at her school students were not allowed to wear their hair out in afro during exams and that boys were told they couldn’t wear cornrow or high top styles. Recently, applying for jobs in the corporate sector, she has felt pressured to wear her hair differently.
“Hair discrimination is still worryingly common,” said Maurice Mcleod, chief executive of Race On The Agenda, a social policy thinktank. “People should not be penalised for the hair that naturally grows from their heads. Despite equality legislation, some schools and workplaces still have very fixed ideas about what ‘professional’ hair looks like and all too often, this is from a white European lens.”
“For many black students and employees, battling workplace dress codes – official or unofficial – is part of everyday life,” Halo said.
In 2017, Chikayzea Flanders, 12, left a Fulham boys school in London after being told on his first day to cut off his dreadlocks or face suspension. He came from a rastafarian family and was able to return after legal action funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The school accepted its policy had amounted to indirect discrimination.
In 2015 Lara Odoffin, then 21, was refused a job unless she removed her braids, with the unnamed employer saying: “We cannot accept braids – it is simply part of the uniform and grooming requirements we get from our clients.”
“We know it’s really important for people to be able to be themselves in the workplace,” said Richard Sharp, vice-president of human resources at Unilever UK & Ireland. “We believe the individuality of hair should be celebrated, which is why we are supporting and communicating the Halo Code to our people, and believe it is a vital step in the fight to ensure racial justice and racial equity for the next generation.”
