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SEARCH RESULT
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Howard University Student's Protest Knocks Out Ruby Tuesday Anti-Braids Policy
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-Chief
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Grace Salvant, a 19-year-old public relations student at Howard University, needed a job. Trying to help her mother pay her college tuition, she went to reapply for her old server’s job at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant in the heart of Washington, D.C., where she worked just last year.
“I honestly didn’t want another loan. I just wanted to be able to pay my tuition up front. That’s why I’m working so hard to get good grades this semester, so I can get scholarships. But, Howard is very frugal when it comes to scholarships. They just don’t give you money like that,” she says. “That’s why I was going to have my backup plan. I was going to work weekends, start saving my money and then sometimes work full time. That was my alternate plan.”
But Salvant was shocked by what she was told upon reapplying for her old job at the restaurant in China Town in mid-January. She said she was told by a Black manager that Ruby Tuesday’s corporate policy would require her to remove her braided hair style in order to be rehired. She said she was told it was an ''image'' thing.
“I looked at him and I was like, ‘What?’” She said she had worn the braids when she worked there a year ago, but the manager told her it was a new policy and that she could start work if she took her braids out. “I took the train back home and I called my Mom on my way home and I started crying because I felt it was a degrading policy,” said the Brooklyn, N.Y. native.
“There’s no reason why they should have such a policy like that that discriminates against people who look like me,” says Salvant. “We have been braiding our hair for centuries. And it just seems as if that was directed toward us as a race, as my gender…I feel like a larger majority of my race and my gender are being excluded because of the way that we choose to represent our culture.”
A dancer and a dance coach, Salvant says she wears braids 90 percent of the time because of the convenience and that she has never chemically treated her hair.
“It just doesn’t make sense to me. It hurts me. It hurts me,” she says.
The college sophomore took action. She called the Ruby Tuesday Corporate headquarters in Maryville, Tenn., and complained, only to hear a corporate employee defend the policy. Then she collected approximately 500 names of Howard students, faculty and staff in protest of what she had been told by the restaurant management was an anti-braids policy at Ruby Tuesday, which has more than 925 restaurants across the nation. And she sought media attention.
The NNPA News Service got no answer in repeated phone calls to the D.C. restaurant on 7th Street in China Town.
But, a spokesman for the Ruby Tuesday corporate headquarters in Maryville, Tenn., initially confirmed the anti-braids policy in a tape recorded interview with NNPA on Thursday, Feb. 21.
“It does say that our servers can’t wear multiple braids. That’s true of any gender or any race,” said Ruby Tuesday spokesman Richard Johnson. “Our policy for our dress code says that multiple braids are not acceptable as part of the dress code. It’s actually been in place for some time. I can’t give you the exact date that it started, but it’s not a brand new policy.”
Told that Miss Salvant had worn braids as a Ruby Tuesday server just last year, Johnson said, “It’s possible that it has changed within the last year. That’s very possible.”
But, he was emphatic about the enforcement of the policy.
“Any one of any race or gender, under the current policy, isn’t conforming to the dress code if they’re wearing multiple braids in their hair,” he said. “We actually have had Caucasian people who have had multiple braids and have been told that they can’t work with those braids in their hair. I know that’s happened…This was not in any way intended to be discriminatory or based on any kind of racial or ethnic decision.”
Johnson said he had been told about Salvant’s complaint after she called and complained to a different corporate employee.
Responding to questions about the reason for the anti-braids policy, Johnson would only say that the hairstyle did not meet Ruby Tuesday “standards”, inclusive with multiple ear rings, body piercing, extreme jewelry and “purple hair”.
But, then something changed. After this reporter told Johnson that the NNPA Wire Service, the Black Press of America, serves a membership of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers across the nation and that Salvant had already collected more than 500 names on a petition against the policy that would disparately affect Black people, he responded, “I understand what you are saying…I appreciate you sharing it with us and I will share these concerns with the people that set this policy.”
Within one hour, Johnson had called back with a reversal of the policy – blaming local restaurant managers for a misinterpretation of the policy.
“Since I talked to you, I made some calls and had some conversations and meetings to try to get exactly what our policy says and to determine exactly whether it’s being interpreted right in this location that we’ve been talking about or not. I also have spoken to two of our senior executives, our head of human resources and our senior vice president in charge of operations,” he said.
“The issue that was raised, the question that was raised was whether or not servers can wear multiple braids working in our restaurants, the answer is yes they can. And, yes, our managers have been interpreting the policy to say that they can not.
That’s not been correct. And it will be corrected. And we will communicate this to all of our operations people, all of our management in all of our restaurants so they’ll understand that if they are interpreting the policy to say that multiple braids cannot be worn, that’s not accurate. So, their servers will be able to wear multiple braids or cornrows or that style of hair.”
Johnson said the policy does, however, prohibit the wearing of dreadlocks by servers.
“Our concern with dreadlocks…We’re concerned about it from a hygene standpoint, from whether or not employees are keeping their hair clean and whether or not there are any issue of cleanliness and that’s what’s that’s about.
It’s specifically related to that,” Johnson said. “We’re just saying that that hairstyle and that particular way of wearing hair presents the opportunity for that, for hair not to be clean.”
Health and food service sanitation codes vary from state to state. But, health codes in the District of Columbia do not address the cleanliness of dreadlocks or any other specific hair styles, says Ronnie Taylor, a supervisor in the Division of Food safety and Hygiene Inspection services in the Health Regulation and Licensing Administration of the D.C. Department of Health.
If they are handling the foods in the kitchen, “The code just states that the hair must be restrained by either a net or a hat or some form of hair restraint, but it doesn’t address any hair styles or anything like that,” Taylor says.
But, as for servers, “They’re really not a food handler,” he says. “If you’re not actually handling the foods, there’s nothing actually in the food code that says you have to have a hair net on, if you’re just taking the plate to the table, if you’re just serving the food.”
The Ruby Tuesday hair debacle is reminiscent of a 1995 news story that caused Wendy’s restaurants to overturn a similar anti-braids policy. The restaurant had fired three Black nursing students for refusing to take out their braids when the Richmond Free Press published a story quoting Virginia laws as recommending braids as a proper form of hair restraint that is equal to caps, nets and barrettes.
Wendy’s corporate headquarters overturned the misguided policy after reading the original story in the Free Press and a follow-up that was published in the New York Times.
Salvant is not alone in her Ruby Tuesday experience.
Wendi Hathorn, a New Orleans native who is also a Howard student, said when she applied for a job at the same Ruby Tuesday while wearing twisted hair locks, she actually complied after being told by a White manager that she had to take out her twists.
“He asked me if I would take them out. I told him yes and that was the only way I was able to get hired,” Hathorn said.
She worked there a little more than a month before she’d had enough.
“I wasn’t happy with having to take my hair out because my hair is natural and I didn’t want to straighten it every day before I go to work,” she said. “And they also wanted me to take out one of my earrings because it was in the top part of my ear and they don’t allow those either.”
Johnson said the Ruby Tuesday anti-braids and anti-dreadlocks policy was “made as a decision among the senior human resources and operations leadership of the company.”
Despite the turn-over of the policy, Salvant says she will no longer pursue employment at Ruby Tuesday and nor will she spend her money there.
“That turned me off toward Ruby Tuesday as a corporation, as a restaurant, as anything. And I will never eat there again. I will never put my money in there again,” Salvant said. “It’s ridiculous that you had the policy in the first place and I just don’t want to work for a company that would actually take that into consideration...This is 2008, not 1965.”
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