Former Spice Woman Mel B is amongst dozens of Black Britons urging the UK’s Parliament to replace the nation’s equality legal guidelines and prohibit Afro hair discrimination.
In an open letter to lawmakers on Tuesday (in a single day in Australia), campaigners together with Mel B, singer Beverley Knight and lawmaker Paulette Hamilton known as for the UK to introduce a legislation to recognise Afro hair as a protected attribute.
“For too lengthy, individuals with Afro hair have skilled unjust therapy in U.Ok. society and the present legislation just isn’t direct sufficient to manipulate companies, faculties and the general public to stop critical hurt,” learn the open letter, launched forward of World Afro Day on Sunday.
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“The omission of hair as a protected attribute from the legislation has facilitated on a regular basis discrimination and the normalisation of Afro hair as inferior in each sphere of life,” it added.
Mel B wrote that her “huge wild curly hair” drew undesirable consideration for her as a toddler and later as a pop star.
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“The very first video shoot I did as a Spice Woman for Wannabe, the stylists took one take a look at my hair and advised me it needed to be straightened,” she stated. “My huge hair did not match the pop star mould.”
She stated she stood her floor and didn’t change her hair, and ladies nonetheless inform her how the Nineties music video impressed them to cease straightening their hair.
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Racial discrimination based mostly on hairstyles has been a subject of debate and lawsuits in the USA for a while. Earlier this yr a trial occurred in Texas involving a Black scholar who was suspended from his college for sporting twisted dreadlocks.
Texas and Michigan are amongst two dozen U.S. states that not too long ago launched legal guidelines supposed to bar employers and faculties from penalising individuals due to hairstyles together with Afros, braids, dreadlocks, twists or Bantu knots.
In July, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico handed comparable anti-discrimination laws.
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