How the Illinois CROWN Act, If Passed, Can Protect Employees and Students From Race-Based Hair Discrimination

If anyone had asked me what the crowning achievement of our Illinois Legislature has been during the pandemic, I would answer, without much thought, “Consideration of the passage of the CROWN Act.” The Act was recently approved as SB3616 by a plurality vote in the Senate and is now awaiting a vote in the House. If our state representatives support this bill as overwhelmingly as did the senators, then the CROWN Act becomes law when the governor signs it. The CROWN Act amends the Illinois Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based upon an individual’s texture or style of hair. We have State Senator Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago) to thank for taking the lead to achieve a good result for our state.

What is also interesting is that the push for passage of this Act arose from the CROWN Coalition of organizations, including Dove, the National Urban League, Color of Change, and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. If all goes well, Illinois will join a growing number of states that have passed similar legislation, with California having been the first in line to do something explicit to identify and stop race-based discrimination in the workplace and educational venues based solely upon particular hair texture and protective hairstyles common among people of color.

The acronym CROWN stands for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.” Without legal protection, employers and schools have ordered Black people to avoid the common protective ways of styling natural hair—styling hair into braids, twists, cornrows, afros, or otherwise tightly coiling it. Accordingly, the Act more broadly also prohibits the denial of employment and educational opportunities because of hair texture or protective hair styles.

Similarly, both public and private schools have also shown intolerance for natural hairstyles by forbidding girls and young women from wearing them in class photos. There have even been instances of students being sent home because such hairstyles were banned in school codes.

A few years ago, a real-life situation like the ones made illegal by the CROWN Act came to the attention of the public through a Chicago Tribune editorial that documented the experience of Black girl wearing her hair in braids with red ribbons who was excluded from her class photo for violating the school’s dress code and sent home. The piece admonished her parents for letting their child go to school with a hairstyle that was forbidden by the school’s dress code. The very embarrassed parents apologized profusely, while the school and the Tribune columnist got away with their race-based humiliation of a young girl and the scolding of her family. Ironically, the editorial noted that the school code also prohibited students from coloring their hair, yet a Caucasian boy who had dyed his hair chartreuse was allowed to join his fellow students in the class photo from that the African American girl was excluded. The racist viewpoint in this set of facts reveals the application of a double, race-based standard—by the school, the Tribune staff writer, and the Tribune. It reflects the ease with which a black girl was locked out while the gate was wide open to her white counterpart.

This scenario provokes the question: Why does the CROWN Act have to be passed in order to stop such blatant, commonplace, and hurtful discrimination? Yet that is the purpose of state and local legislative bodies. Unfortunately, as with other corrective laws that are enacted, before we decide that a new or stronger law is necessary to curtail discrimination, we first have to learn of the pain and anguish suffered by the victims of discriminatory actions. In these scenarios, they are employees fearful of retaliation if they complain. They are children who are excluded from standing next to their white classmates in the class photo, along with their terrified parents, simply because they are Black and maybe acting “too Black.”

How particular schools treat students with hairstyles they consider extreme can also be perplexing. As the father of one student prevented from being in her class photo but not sent home, asked: “They let her stay in school, so if she’s not a disruption to the class, then why is she a disruption to the picture?” Fortunately, one of the provisions in the new law requires the State Board of Education to provide educational materials to all the schools in order to inform them about protective hairstyles. Perhaps that is the best start for implementing the CROWN Act. What we understand can sometimes help us be not only more reasonable but more compassionate and thus more inclusive.

While we may be distressed by the story of the girl with the red ribbon in her braids and the thought of those who have been punished for their race and natural physical features, we can be courageous to press for change. With the guidance of those with authority and the ability to be heard, we can learn—even if by force for some—how to celebrate every child and adult from wherever they came and whomever their ancestors were, because diversity and inclusion are what make us feel whole and perhaps even be whole.