The CROWN Act and the Architecture of Belonging: Hair, Autonomy, and the Ethics of Access

I. Hair as Governance: The Regulation of the Body

The CROWN “Act”, Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, is frequently framed as a civil rights correction addressing discrimination against natural hair textures and protective styles. At first glance, it appears to be legislation about aesthetics. Yet a closer examination reveals something far more consequential: it is a challenge to the governance of bodies.

Hair has historically functioned as a regulatory site. For Black communities, it has been scrutinized, disciplined, and professionalized under norms rooted in Eurocentric ideals. Texture has been coded as unruly. Protective styles have been deemed distracting.

Natural presentation has been reframed as unprofessional. These judgments were never neutral.

The CROWN Act intervenes byformally recognizing hair discrimination as a manifestation of racial discrimination. In doing so, it acknowledges that what institutions often call “policy” is frequently culture masquerading as objectivity.

But legislation alone cannot dismantle the deeper architecture of belonging that determines whose bodies are read as compliant, competent, and worthy.

II. Cultural Inheritance and Internal Negotiation

As the eldest son of Jamaican parents, I was raised with an understanding that hair carries significance beyond appearance. Within Afro-Caribbean communities, hair is intertwined with pride, lineage, and resistance. It is an embodied archive, shaped by colonial histories and sustained through cultural reclamation.

To maintain one’s hair is not simply to groom; it is to participate in continuity.

And yet, my relationship with my own hair has not always been uncomplicated.

There are days when I neglect it, not out of disregard for culture, but because exhaustion outweighs expectation. At times, the labor of maintenance feels disproportionate to my available energy. When that happens, the guilt I experience is layered. It feels less like an aesthetic lapse and more like a cultural failing.

This tension prompts a philosophical question: when does collective pride become an internalized obligation? How do we honor heritage without conflating authenticity with constant presentation?

The CROWN Act protects the right to wear natural hair without institutional penalty. It does not resolve the interior negotiations many of us carry, between pride and pressure, heritage and autonomy.

III. Professionalism and the Myth of Neutral Standards

Institutional grooming codes are often justified under the language of professionalism. But professionalism is not an objective category. It is historically contingent and culturally constructed.

What has been deemed “polished” or “appropriate” in professional settings has frequently mirrored proximity to whiteness: straightened hair, subdued textures, and minimal deviation from dominant norms.

When employers or educational institutions defend hair policies as neutral, they overlook the cultural assumptions embedded within those standards.

The CROWN Act disrupts this narrative by naming hair discrimination explicitly. It compels institutions to confront the reality that so-called uniform standards may in fact be instruments of exclusion.

However, the prohibition of overt discrimination does not automatically produce cultural transformation.Subtle biases persist in subjective performance evaluations, in coded remarks about “fit,” and in assumptions about discipline and competence.

Policy can restrict behavior. It cannot, on its own, recalibrate perception.

IV. Disability Justice and the Politics of Grooming

To examine the CROWN Act without engaging disability justice would leave the analysis incomplete.

Disability justice, as articulated by activists and scholars such as Patty Berne and Mia Mingus, insists that liberation movements must center those most impacted by intersecting systems of oppression. It emphasizes interdependence over rugged individualism, collective access over individualized accommodation, and anti-ableist norms over compliance-based inclusion.

Grooming standards often operate in direct tension with these principles.

For many disabled individuals, particularly those who are neurodivergent or living with chronic mental health conditions, hair maintenance is not a trivial task. Executive dysfunction, sensory processing differences, chronic fatigue, depression, and motor coordination challenges can significantly impact grooming capacity.

When institutions enforce rigid presentation norms, they may inadvertently penalize manifestations of disability.

An autistic adult may find certain styling products intolerable due to sensory overload. A person experiencing major depressive episodes may struggle with routine maintenance. An individual with mobility limitations may require assistance with styling. In each case, the expectation to appear effortlessly “put together” presumes a baseline of executive function and energy that is not universally accessible.

Disability justice reframes this dynamic. Instead of asking whether individuals can conform to standards, it asks whether the standards themselves are structured around able-bodied assumptions.

The CROWN Act addresses discrimination rooted in race and hair texture. A disability justice lens extends the inquiry: are grooming expectations designed in ways that presume independence, stamina, and nominative capacity? If so, what would collective access look like in professional and educational spaces?

It might mean flexible grooming policies. It might mean decoupling competence from aesthetic conformity. Furthermore, it might mean recognizing that presentation is shaped by health, access, and support networks.

True inclusion requires more than non-discrimination; it requires anti-ableist recalibration.

V. Interdependence and the Redefinition of Care

There is an under examined assumption in grooming discourse: that self-care is always an individual responsibility.

Disability justice complicates this narrative by foregrounding interdependence. Not everyone maintains their hair alone. For some, care is communal, performed byfamily members, friends, or paid caregivers. Access to quality hair care may depend on economic stability, transportation, and culturally competent stylists.

When we romanticize self-sufficiency, we obscure the networks that make presentation possible.

In my own life, hair maintenance has often felt like a personal obligation, something I must manage to avoid judgment. But reframing the issue through interdependence shifts the moral calculus. Care is not solely about discipline; it is about resources, support, and capacity.

The CROWN Act affirms that natural hair should not disqualify someone from opportunity. A disability justice framework adds that opportunity should not hinge on one’s ability to sustain aesthetic labor under unequal conditions.

VI. Symbolic Progress and Structural Continuity

It would be intellectually insufficient to treat the CROWN Act as a comprehensive solution. It addresses a specific vector of discrimination. Furthermore, it does not eliminate economic disparities affecting access to culturally competent hair care. It does not dismantle implicit bias. It does not automatically reshape workplace cultures steeped in conformity.

Nor does it resolve the internalized expectations within marginalized communities themselves.

Yet symbolic recognition matters. When the law names a harm, it validates lived experience. It signals that what was once trivialized is structurally significant.

The act contributes to a broader ethical conversation: who is permitted to exist publicly without modification?

For those navigating race, disability, neurodivergence, and cultural inheritance simultaneously, hair becomes a nexus of negotiation. It is at once pride and pressure,

autonomy and expectation, and visibility and vulnerability.

VII. Beyond Compliance: Toward an Ethics of Belonging

The ultimate question is not whether natural hair is allowed.

It is whether institutions are willing to interrogate the deeper norms that determine belonging.

Belonging is not achieved through reluctant tolerance. It emerges when systems are redesigned to reflect anti-ableist principles, cultural plurality, and collective access. It requires moving beyond assimilation into structural imagination.

I continue to negotiate my relationship with my hair, honoring its cultural resonance while granting myself grace on days when capacity wanes. I am learning that autonomy includes the freedom to define care on humane terms.

The CROWN Act protects my right to wear my hair naturally. But the broader project, dismantling the architecture that equates conformity with worth, remains unfinished.

Hair was never merely aesthetic.

It has always been about who is permitted to show up whole.

A Note of Thanks

To the readers who engage critically and thoughtfully with questions of race, disability, and identity: thank you. These conversations require nuance, patience, and intellectual humility. They ask us to examine not only policy but also the unspoken assumptions that shape our institutions and ourselves.

Progress is rarely singular. It unfolds through sustained dialogue, reflective practice, and collective accountability. I am grateful for those willing to participate in that work, not as spectators, but as co-architects of a more inclusive and equitable public sphere.

Ian Allan

Self-Advocate for The Arc of Northern Virginia

Ian Allan is a self-advocate with a deep commitment to policy literacy, systems change, and disability justice. Through 171e Arc of Northern Virginia, he works to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are not merely served by systems, but are actively shaping them.