This Quiz Can Tell If You’re Biased Against Black Hair

The Cut Reports:

“Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair,” Malcolm X asked a predominately black crowd in 1962. Though it was delivered 55 years ago, the famous speech cuts to issues that still live on today. The American attitude toward African-American hair has long been a negative one, and a new study captured just how deep-seated that negativity can be.

“The ‘Good Hair’ Study: Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Black Women’s Hair” employed a modified version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT,) a decades-old racial bias test which, it should be noted, has facedrecent scrutiny over its accuracy. Still, this version of the test found that a strong bias against textured hair (or natural black hairstyles) existed within many of the study’s 3,475 participants. In other words, textured hair was perceived to be “less beautiful, less sexy/attractive, and less professional than smooth hair.”

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