vesivett.

poemsofthedead:

It’s funny (not) how people can so quickly forget that Black people with natural hair styles have difficulty finding jobs and receive pressure on the job to change

whereas that does not happen to white people who try to wear braids, locs, or just frizzed out “wild” hair.

This has been proven time and time again. A major women’s magazine was called out for referring to Black women’s natural hair as “unprofessional” just a few years ago. And magazine editors are relatively liberal/progressive compared the HR/management in most companies/npo’s. A lot of us have multiple anecdotal evidence we could provide for this also.

Similar to how Muslim women (and others who follow religions that they believe mandate it) have the legal right to wear hijab but have to fight like hell to get it accepted by most companies (and often have to modify the style/color choice to make the company more willing to allow it), but white women can come into the office in “fashionable” wraps and everyone compliments them on how cool they are.

And yes, tattoos & piercings have to be covered in many jobs - but not all! And white people with ink or other mods still have a better chance of getting the job than a POC with the same ink or mods simply because your mods don’t completely negate your privilege as a white person.

When white people do these things, they are viewed as “edgy”, “artistic”, “creative”, “eccentric”, “fashionable”, “forward thinking”, “progressive”, etc. but at the end of the day they do not face SYSTEMIC discrimination for it. It sometimes makes things a little more complicated for them, but it does not actually hold them back. I know they get some shit for it but it doesn’t make or break their lives, and they have choice if they are going to do it, knowing the potential (minimal) consequences.

When POC do things that are natural to us, part of our historical/cultural/spiritual background, we are “too ethnic”, “too in your face”, “unprofessional”, “confrontational”, “ghetto”, “primitive/backwards”, “inflexible/unwilling to play the game”, etc. And it actually is used to withhold opportunities from us. We are dehumanized or pathologized for it, even if it is a tradition that is so important to our identity that we don’t really have a “choice” to not do it, even knowing that the consequences will be great.

(via karnythia)