Do Google's "professional hair" results shows that it's racist?
by: Tristin Manus 8th
Summary: Recently, an MBA student named Rosalia discovered something so unacceptable while on google. Googling “unprofessional hairstyles for work” yielded image results mainly of black women with natural hair, while searching for the “professional” ones offered pictures of coiffed, white women. Often the hair styles themselves were not vastly different -- only the hair type and the wearer’s skin color.
Analysis: "Google Images seems to have taken many of the pictures of black women wearing the “unprofessional” hairstyles were from blogs, articles and Pinterest boards. Many of these are by people of color explicitly discussing and protesting against racist attitudes to hair. One image led me to a post criticizing Hampton University's ban on dreadlocks and cornrows; another was linked with a post celebrating natural hair and the “ridiculous” pressure to straighten it for the office; here’s a rejection of the idea that big, natural curls are “distracting” in a newsroom." "-Leigh Alexander, author of this article. But it's just hair right? Google three black teenagers vs three white teenagers and see the result. Google beautiful women or men and see who pops up first. Even just google men or women and see that the majority of the images are just white people. This is the exact reason why we have awareness for black people and these examples show the bias that google has towards white people. We immediately see how white, eurocentric biases - from race and gender beliefs to cultural standards of beauty and value - dominate the very way the web works and what stories it tells about the social construct of humans. Google Images was conceived in response to what people most wanted to see. Maybe it hasn’t decided yet what we NEED to see.
Great article. There's nothing wrong with natural hair, and I agree that it should be loved and celebrated. Many google searches will lead to racist results, and something should be done about that!
ReplyDeleteI honestly feel that these shouldn't labeled as they are. Anyone from any race can chose to get a professional hairstyle or they can go natural. It shouldn't be categorized this way because there are plenty of white women who have natural hairstyles and plenty of black women who have salon styled hair. Bad labeling on googles side.
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