Florida’s Miami Seaside adopted an ordinance Wednesday banning race-based hair discrimination in housing, employment and entry to public companies and amenities.
The Miami Seaside Metropolis Fee voted unanimously to ban discriminatory practices “based mostly on the feel or fashion of an individual’s hair,” the town stated in a news release Wednesday.
“The brand new ordinance applies in circumstances the place hair is usually related to a selected race or nationwide origin, corresponding to Black communities,” it stated.
“It’s unacceptable in 2022 that Black Individuals and different minorities nonetheless face discrimination based mostly on one thing so trivial as whether or not or not they’ve textured or curly hair,” Miami Seaside Vice Mayor Alex Fernandez stated in an announcement. “This serves to guard cultural id and never have to fret about sacrificing who you’re in Miami Seaside.”
The town’s human rights ordinance had already prohibited discrimination based mostly on a variety of traits, together with weight and top. Nonetheless, these protections will now be expanded to incorporate hair texture and kinds.
“Race-based hair discrimination stems from a notion that straight hair is clear, neat {and professional} whereas the other perception applies to textured or curly hair sorts,” Alan Fishman, who chairs the town’s Human Rights Committee, stated in an announcement. “In actuality, that is simply one other option to discriminate based mostly on racial stereotypes.”
It was not instantly clear what penalties these discovered to have violated the ordinance might face. Miami Seaside Metropolis didn’t instantly reply to an in a single day request for remark.
It was additionally not clear whether or not the push for the brand new ordinance was prompted by any particular incident.
In March, the U.S. Home handed the Crown Act, which seeks to ban hair-related discrimination. The measure, H.R. 2116, which was launched by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., handed in a vote of 235-189 alongside social gathering strains.
The Crown Act states that “routinely, folks of African descent are disadvantaged of academic and employment alternatives” for sporting their hair in pure or protecting hairstyles corresponding to locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, or Afros. The act has been launched within the Senate, the place it’s awaiting passage.
There have been a variety of excessive profile circumstances lately representing what civil rights advocates have warned is a rising drawback of discrimination towards African-Individuals, together with adults and kids at college.
In a single such case, a highschool wrestler was pressured to determine between chopping his hair or forfeiting a wrestling match in New Jersey. In one other, a New Orleans-area lady was despatched house from a Catholic college firstly of a brand new college 12 months for sporting braids.
Janelle Griffith contributed.
