New state laws fight discrimination, promote black history, culture

Two new state laws will fight discrimination in New Mexico and promote Black history and culture, Black leaders from across the state said in a Zoom presentation sponsored by New Mexico State University Black Programs.

The No School Discrimination for Hair Act (NSDHA) and the Black Education Act were passed by the state Legislature during its regular session earlier this year. Two identical version of NSDHA, one in the New Mexico House of Representatives and one in the state Senate, passed with only a single “no” vote in the House. BEA passed both houses unanimously. The acts were signed into law April 5 by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

“These bills are really coming from the community,” said New Mexico state Sen. Harold Pope, Jr., D-Bernalillo, a co-sponsor of both bills.

Pope, who is the first African-American to serve in the state Senate, joined with leaders across the state to participate in a Zoom presentation called “Real Talk: 50 Shades of Blackness” put on by NMSU Black Programs.

Others who participated included: House Majority Leader Sheryl Williams Stapleton, D-Bernalillo (also a co-sponsor of both bills); state Office of African-American Affairs Director Amy Whitfield and Deputy Director Nicole Bedford; NMSU Black Programs Interim Director Kimberly York; NMSU professors Henrietta Pichon, Ph.D., and Eric House, Ph.D.; NMSU American Indian Program Director Michael Ray; and NMSU Black Student Association Vice President Ignacio Alvarado.

Pope, who defeated a long-time Republican incumbent in Albuquerque’s District 48 in 2020, said he was crying on the Senate floor when he introduced the bill, showing an enlarged photo of himself when he was the only Black student in his kindergarten class and was made fun of because his hair was in corn rows.

Stapleton, an NMSU graduate and a state representative since 1995, said the new law “represents the work that the community has put forth together. It is representative of the people who reside here in New Mexico.”

NSDHA, whose sponsors included both Pope and Stapleton, prohibits “the imposition of discipline, discrimination or disparate treatment in schools based on the hair or cultural or religious headdresses of a student,” according to the act.

“It is discrimination,” Whitfield said. Creating NSDHA will address “a lack of opportunity and access” in the state, she said. Black women are three times more likely to get things “written in their evaluations about their looks,” Whitfield said. “That is stopping us from exceling. That is stopping us from moving forward.”

Pichon called the new law groundbreaking.

“People don’t realize that we get discriminated against because of the way our hair grows out of our scalp,” Pichon said.

Passing the act, she said, will “open opportunities and open conversations.”

Many New Mexico residents “didn’t even realize people were being discriminated against because of their hair,” Pichon said.

“It is not just a hair issue. It’s a human rights issue,” Ray said. “You don’t realize how much this impacts your life.”

There are Black students in every Las Cruces school, said Doña Ana Elementary School Principal Cherie Love. Passing the hair discrimination law will positively impact their self-esteem, she said. “I think it’s just so important,” she said.

A hairstyle “can be indicative of your culture, your religion and you as a person,” Alvarado said. “It represents who I am. I’m showing the world who I am.”

Hair discrimination is “a shared experience across so many populations,” York said. “This is for all of us. We can all benefit whether or not it is a lived experience.”

York, an independently licensed mental health therapist, testified before the New Mexico House “about the psychological harm associated with natural hair discrimination.”

A former counselor at Lynn Middle School, York was also involved with the Black Education Act (BEA), serving on the committee that drafted the bill.

BEA, cosponsored by Pope and Stapleton, helps to address the “lack of culturally relevant curriculum in the schools,” York said.

The act requires “racial sensitivity and anti-racism training or professional development for school personnel”; mandates that the state Public Education and Higher Education departments work together to develop programs and curricula “that recognize and teach Black culture and anti-racism and improve job opportunities for Black people in public and higher education.”

The state has a Hispanic Education Act and an Indian Education Act, Bedford said. Passing the Black Education Act was a necessary next step.

The new law will help schools “focus on Black stories and Black history,” House said.

For more information, visit nmlegis.gov. Search for the No School Discrimination for Hair Act under HB 29 and SB 80 and search for the Black Education Act under HB 43 for the Black Education Act.

Visit https://blackprograms.nmsu.edu/ and www.oaaa.state.nm.us.