When Your Identity Is Inherently "Unprofessional": Navigating Rules of Professional Appearance Rooted in Cisheteronormative Whiteness as Black Women and Gender Non-Conforming Professionals
![handle is hein.journals/sjjlc34 and id is 93 raw text is: WHEN YOUR IDENTITY IS INHERENTLY
UNPROFESSIONAL: NAVIGATING RULES OF
PROFESSIONAL APPEARANCE ROOTED IN
CISHETERONORMATIVE WHITENESS AS BLACK
WOMEN AND GENDER NON-CONFORMING
PROFESSIONALS
SHANNON CUMBERBATCH'
INTRODUCTION
Several years ago, I attended my first large-scale career fair as a re-
cruiter where I screened a mass of aspiring lawyers for staff attorney
positions at my legal organization. During our brief break from mara-
thon interviewing, my white colleagues shut down their tables to enjoy
their downtime and as I prepared to do the same, I looked up to find a
critical mass of Black2 women excitedly converging upon my interview
station. Forming a half circle around my table, they began exclaiming
how enamored they were by my appearance and how it countered much
of the counseling they had received on how to appear professional and
look like a lawyer. They emphatically discussed the damage and finan-
cial expense they incurred to straighten and subdue their naturally
coiled, gravity defying hair to appear polished and professional for
their interviews. They shared how they spent several hours in several
1 * Shannon Cumberbatch is the founder and facilitator of Uproot.ed - programming commit-
ted to uprooting oppression through education and action. Shannon is also an attorney, and the
Director of Equity & Institutional Transformation at The Bronx Defenders, a public defender office
in the South Bronx. Thank you to the to the Black women and gender non-conforming people who
lent their narratives to this piece and trusted me to tell their stories.
2 1 capitalize Black when referring to Black people, because as explained by Kimberle Cren-
shaw, Black [people], like Asian [people], Latin[x/e], and other 'minorities,' constitute a specific
cultural group and, as such, require denotation as a proper noun.' ... I do not capitalize 'white,'
which is not a proper noun, since [neither white people nor 'people of color' refers to] a specific
cultural group. Kimberl6 Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and
Violence against Women of Color, 43 STAN. L. REV. 1241, 1244 n.6 (1991). In this context, Black is
both a racial category that encompasses many cultures and ethnicities of African descendants, and
a specific culture borne out of collective resistance to anti-Black oppression and preservation of
ancestral practices.
81](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/sjjlc34&div=10&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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