Legislators in racially various Puerto Rico have opened a public debate on a invoice to explicitly prohibit discrimination towards hairstyles corresponding to cornrows and Afros, sparking a heated debate.
Native authorities officers argue the laws is pointless as a result of federal and native legal guidelines already ban such discrimination.
However Puerto Rican activists mentioned at a listening to Tuesday that the island’s Afro Caribbean neighborhood nonetheless faces discrimination and desires express safety in the case of public providers, work, training and housing.
“I’m 23 years previous, and I’m bored with this downside,” mentioned Julia Llanos Bultrón, a trainer who wears cornrows.
“I’m very upset with a system that pushes us to vary the hair with which we’re born.”
Llanos mentioned {that a} college within the northeast city of Fajardo supplied her a job final 12 months given that she reduce her hair as a result of they didn’t permit locks.
She declined.
Related incidents had been recounted by others who spoke at a crowded public listening to held at San Juan’s seaside Capitol constructing, noting that the hairstyles in query are culturally vital and carry historic significance.
Greater than 1.6 million individuals within the US territory of three.2 million establish as being of two or extra races, whereas almost 230,000 establish solely as Black, in line with the US Census.
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