The hair shopping experience for Black women is notoriously bad.
That leaves Black women with one option: Afro-Caribbean hair shops that are not in fact African or Caribbean owned; neither are the hair, the products, tools and accessories African sourced.
The issue with this is that the experience of shopping at these stores is, at best, confusing as the shop keepers are often not qualified to really understand what they're selling or the needs of their primary consumer. At worst, this deficiency in knowledge about Black hair and an absence of duty of care or general customer service can lead to a deeply unpleasant, misogynistic, and even dangerous, shopping experience for Black women.
“The shop owner and his workers will often follow me round the store, staring as if I’m going to steal any second,” Diko Blackings, a Diversity Manager from Oxford, tells. “They will peer into my bag to see if there’s anything in there. After they’ve done this they almost always come up to me and ask if they can help. I hate it. I want to browse without question and suspicion.”
This experience is one that many Black women can relate to. In fact it's perfectly depicted on the Channel 4 TV Show Riches. In the first episode, there is a scene where a little girl is walking through a hair shop in London with her mother while being followed by the shopkeeper. “Mummy, why is he following us?” she says.
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