GenForward Poll: Half of black youth face job discrimination
WASHINGTON — Qymana Botts saw white colleagues with the same amount of experience getting promoted to cashier ahead of her at the Indiana discount store where she worked. When she asked her supervisors why, they told her she didn’t project the image that they wanted from their cashiers: straight hair — not her natural Afro — and more makeup.
“When it came time for promotions and raises and things like that, I was told I need to fit into a more European kind of appearance,” Botts said of her 2010 experience. “They wanted me to straighten my hair, but I wasn’t willing to do that.”
Botts, 25, is not alone.
Almost half of young African-Americans say they’ve experienced racial discrimination while looking for a job and while on the job, and one-third of young women of all races and ethnicities say they’ve faced employment-related gender discrimination.