Hair Politics at Work — The Substantive Conversation Behind the Surface Talk
Beyond the social-media moments, what the workplace conversation about African and Black hair has actually changed — and what it has not — for women in senior professional roles.
2:58 AM · 75 min
The conversation about African and Black hair at work has moved a long way in fifteen years. The CROWN Act in many US jurisdictions, the increasingly explicit corporate diversity statements, the visibility of Black women at senior levels wearing braids, locs, and natural styles — the surface picture has shifted. The substantive question is what happened to the underlying workplace dynamics.
This panel brings together four African and Black women in senior professional roles — a senior partner at a major law firm, a vice president in banking, an associate professor at a research university, and a managing director in consulting — to discuss what the day-to-day experience of hair in the workplace is actually like in their tier of the labor market. The judgments that still happen. The careful decisions about what to wear when. The colleagues who notice and the colleagues who pretend not to. The cost of code-switching, and the version of it that has not gone away.
Practical and substantive. For working African and Black women navigating senior professional environments. Q&A throughout.