Court case involving a company which rescinded a job offer to an African-American woman who refused to change her dreadlocks hairstyle. The EEOC argued that discriminating against people with dreadlocks amounted to discrimination against African-Americans since the hairstyle is culturally and physiologically associated with this group. EEOC lost at trial and now on appeal. Questions are:
[ol]
[li]Whether the judges got it right under the law or whether the EEOC has a compelling case, and[/li][li]What the law should be in such cases.[/li][/ol]
I’m going to leave the first to legal people here (though I’d be interested in their assessments). As to the second, my feeling is that if it can be shown that the employer (or whoever) is deliberately attempting to discriminate against African-Americans and using things like hairstyle as a proxy, then that should be forbidden. But if it’s has a valid race-neutral basis that just happens to correlate with a secondary ethnic characteristic, then it should be OK.
What you describe as your preferred state of the law is the law. But, of course, the devil is in the details.
In particular, the question is often what can be inferred about the intent based on the results. If firing any employee who shows up hungover after St. Patrick’s day is a policy that only affects white people, and the employer has no similar policy as to other holidays, is that enough to infer discriminatory intent? The law generally leans toward saying “no”–you need more than that.
White people can have dreads too. Just ask my hippie niece.
The part that caught my attention was:
That seems to indicate it’s not a racial thing, although I didn’t see if said applicant was actually hired after cutting of his dreads.
But this is one of those cases where the court got the law right, but the company has a stupid policy. Stupid policies aren’t illegal, but this was for a call center. Why do they care what you look like as long as you don’t show up naked or smelly? Unless the argument was more functional (i.e. if they can’t wear a headset with dreads), it seems like a needless restriction.
EDIT: maybe it is elsewhere in the complaint, but a common defense here would be to share the racial makeup of their employees. If the company is 40% black (or whatever the percentage of the local population is), it’s hard to argue they discriminate and don’t hire on a racial basis.
IANAL, but I would think whether it’s racial discrimination or not might be indicated by what hairstyles they allow – do they require black women to straighten their hair, or can black people wear their hair naturally (in a small afro, or cornrows, or braided, etc.) as long as it’s neat and tidy and not dreadlocked?
Sorry, I wasn’t putting words in your mouth. I was only suggesting a possible assumption that you might have made which would make your seemingly nonsensical statement make a bit of sense.
The question was whether, as you put it, it’s “a racial thing”, and the company is using objections to dreadlocks as a way to discriminate against black people. If any number of black people with dreadlocks walk in and are told they won’t be hired unless they cut off their dreadlocks it would have no bearing on that question. So I suggested perhaps you were saying the company made the same objection in the case of a white person with dreadlocks. But if that’s not what you meant, then you don’t seem to have any point at all.
That race has no bearing on hiring in this case? I don’t know how people are having a hard time with this.
Someone applies with a Mohawk. They are told they are hired if they shave the Mohawk, and the last person to walk in with a Mohawk was told the same thing. Should the EEOC open a complaint that this company is racist to a particular group of Native Americans?
Is your point supposed to be that they didn’t just make up the “no dreads” policy on the spot so they didn’t have to hire this particular black woman? Yes, they didn’t just make up the policy on the spot. They have an actual “no dreads” policy and they’ve refused to hire more than one person with dreads.
How does that prove that this isn’t a racist policy?
If the previous person who had dreadlocks was also African-American, then your premise is blown. White people with locks are still pretty rare, so her claiming that she wasn’t discriminating against race, just dreadlocks, is akin to the old SNL skit where the claim was “We don’t judge people by the color of their skin. We judge people by the size of their nostrils.”
Truth is that even if the prior person was white it wouldn’t prove the policy wasn’t motivated by racism. It could be a policy that was designed to weed out mostly blacks but which might on rare occasions sweep in an occasional white person.
But if the prior person was white at least it would have been a coherent point.
IMHO, there are several reasons to side with the employer in this case:
Dreadlocks are something that can be changed, unlike skin color.
Dreadlocks can arguably have an un-professional appearance, if the company had such a policy for professional-appearance reasons. In other words, the company had legit reason.
Another applicant had been told to get rid of dreadlocks, so it’s not a one-time discrimination against this African-American woman.
Using the “culture” argument would set a dangerous precedent. Suppose that an applicant’s ethnic culture required them to go around bare-chested without a shirt on. Should companies be legally required to allow employees to go around without a shirt, due to not being allowed to discriminate against “culture?”
What is their policy for other hairstyles? Are dreadlocks the only styles banned? I ask because, in my understanding, it’s quite common for “black” hairstyles (i.e. natural afro-textured hair, like afros, braids, cornrows, etc.) to be banned or discouraged by offices, such that black women are required to chemically straighten their hair. This strikes me as discrimination, since it allows white (and Asian and other) workers to wear their hair naturally without chemical alteration, but black people (and especially black women) would be required to chemically alter their natural hair.
Not so. If they hired the person after the cut their dreads, then it’s pretty obvious that it was just the dreads. Hairstyles can be changed. If the person didn’t cut their dreads, it’s still not evidence of racism, just evidence of a stupid company policy. If the person cut their dreads and still didn’t get hired then you might have something.