Will nurse leaders help to eradicate 'hair racism' from Nursing and Health Services?

Aims
Nurse managers play key roles in creating and enforcing organisational hair policies and practices. This challenging paper will provoke discussion, debate and hopefully the dismantling of racist hair policies that disproportionately target black students and nurses.
Background
Black people have suffered from centuries of hair racism that continues today. Unfortunately, many nurse leaders underestimate the significance of this issue, while perpetuating the injustice.
Evaluation
This paper is based on research literature, media reports and authors’ lived experiences regarding hair racism experienced by black people and nurses in particular.
Key Issues
Nurse managers often create and police organisational hair policies and dress codes. As health services pledge to eradicate racism ‘in principle’, ending discriminatory hair policies offers nurse managers a practical way to make this principle a reality.
Conclusions
Hair racism is real and damaging for many black nurses and has no place in a modern health service. Rather than designing and policing such structural racism, nurse managers can be instrumental in ending it.
Implications for Nursing Management
Health service hair policies targeting black nurses especially are not ‘neutral’. Nurse managers can challenge this institutional discrimination, demonstrating health services’ commitment to ending racism in all of its guises.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Cox, G, Sobrany, S, Jenkins, E, Musipa, C, Darbyshire, P. Will nurse leaders help eradicate ‘hair racism’ from Nursing and Health Services? J Nurs Manag. 2021; 29: 2014– 2017., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13286. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.