Dimensions of Diversity: Black Hairstyles in the Workplace

During the first episode of Dimensions of Diversity, the firm’s CDIO, Lloyd Freeman is joined by Professor Wendy Greene of Drexel University in Philadelphia to examine the law and effects of racial discrimination against African descendants’ natural hair in the workplace.

Greene is the first tenured African American woman on the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law faculty and has devoted her professional life’s work to advancing racial, color, and gender equity in workplaces and beyond. Her 2008 article, “Title VII: What’s Hair (and Other Race-Base Characteristics) Got to Do with It?”, is being adopted in history-making state and federal legislation known as the C.R.O.W.N. Acts (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Acts). These will be the first laws in the nation to expressly recognize race discrimination is inclusive of the discrimination African descendants’ encounter based upon their natural and protective hairstyles such as afros, twists, locs, and braids.

Greene’s legal scholarship and public advocacy, which explores how constructions of identity inform and constrain anti-discrimination law, have generated civil rights protections for victims of discrimination throughout the United States.

Greene is one of the world’s leading legal experts on this global civil rights issue and founder of the #FreeTheHair campaign, she is currently writing her first book, #FreeTheHair: Locking Black Hair to Civil Rights Movements, with the University of California, Berkeley Press.

To learn more about Greene, click here.

Listen to the Podcast

You can listen to Dimensions of Diversity in many places: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, and more.

Dimensions of Diversity is a podcast created by Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, highlighting diversity in the workplace. Hosted by Lloyd Freeman, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, the podcast features meaningful conversations with industry and community leaders working to advance D&I.