Dreadful Dreadlock Discrimination

"Dreadlocks show a pride in heritage.  There's no mention of hairstyle discrimination, but it's real.  I want you all to think about a new law. If you have dreadlocks, you can be discriminated against.  It's real."
Joseph Osuji, lawyer representing Just Society

 It seems obvious enough.  Section One of the Ontario Human Rights Code obviously is in dire need of expansion.  Nowhere does it mention hairstyle discrimination as has been pointed out, although the Code is supposed to provide protection from discrimination.  Discrimination in the workplace, in hiring practices, in applying for housing, rentals, in refusals to serve an individual on the basis of racial discrimination.

Add hairstyle discrimination.  Might as well throw in tattoos and facial piercings.  And if we really give it some thought we can come up with a whole lot more than just refusing to walk over to another hair salon because a barber shop whose barbers are all Muslim politely refuse to haircut a woman not of their family.  And offensive naming of commercial products.

"There was precisely as much evidence before the tribunal to link the conduct complained of to race as there was to link it to dreadlocks -- which is to say there was none."  That's the opinion of Marvin Kurz, counsel for Bnai Brith's League for Human Rights intervening on behalf of the librarian and the Peel Law Association whom Messrs. Selwyn Pieters and co-complainant Brian Noble accuse of discrimination.


As a librarian/administrator in a lounge reserved for lawyers and law students, Melissa Firth had the effrontery to ask "in an aggressive and demeaning" manner that Selwyn Pieters, a prominent black lawyer engaged in racial activism and law student Paul Waldron, to produce identification.  This request, normal under any circumstances where individuals are charged with the stewardship of a service, obviously enraged and appalled the two men.

Tyler Anderson/National Post Lawyer Selwyn Pieters stands outside Osgoode Hall in Toronto on Dec. 18, 2012. “This appeal is about how black professionals like myself should be able to go about their business like any other professional,” he said.

Who took their complaint to a Human Rights Tribunal that found in their favour, but then that affirmation of their racism angst was outrageously upturned when a Division Court decision overturned the ruling.  Undeterred, Mr. Noble and Mr. Pieters appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal for validation of the original tribunal ruling which noted that they were discriminated against.
 
The tribunal originally awarded the complainants $2,000 for the "violation of their inherent right to be free from discrimination and for injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect" when that fateful encounter took place, in May 2008.  They were convinced that the dreadlocks that Mr. Pieters wore on that occasion marked him out for offensive discrimination.


And Bnai Brith, a group that knows much about racial discrimination simply finds it difficult to credit that offensive discrimination took place in reaction to the wearing of dreadlocks.  "It just doesn't stand to reason that if somebody who's a member of a protected group feels that they're discriminated against, then suddenly the onus is on you to disprove it. There has to be a real opportunity to defend.  You can't presume discrimination - you have to prove it."


The onus on proof is a stickler under the law that the Just Society group find most inconvenient.  Which is why it would make it just so much fairer and just, in their opinion, if dreadlocks were to be placed into the Human Rights Code to begin with, as a subject of apprehended discrimination.  Obviously, they can recognize the intent to discriminate when they see it, hear it, feel it, are assailed and assaulted by it.