Banana Republic Employee Claims boss called her braids too ‘Urban’

All is not paradise in the Banana Republic.  The up-market casual brand has been accused of being discriminatory to one of its employees, a black woman named Destiny Tompkins who said her manager would not schedule her for further shifts unless she removed her box braids.  Tompkins posted to Facebook about the encounter at the Westchester Mall store, saying that after a visit from the district manager, who was white, the store manager, also white, told Tompkins she had to remove her braids.

“I came in and he questioned me about the dress code and immediately, I thought there was something wrong with my outfit but he sat me down and questioned my hair instead,” Tompkins wrote in her Facebook post, which has been shared more than 16,000 times. “He told me that my braids were not Banana Republic appropriate and that they were too ‘urban’ and ‘unkempt’ for their image.”

She tried to explain the style was meant to be protective for her natural hair because “it tends to become really brittle in the cold” so the manager “recommended that I use shea butter for it instead.”

Tompkins said the manager would not schedule her for more shifts if she refused to remove the braids, and she felt so “uncomfortable” that she walked out before her shift was over. “I have never been so humiliated and degraded in my life by a white person.”

She said the box braids were not a matter of unprofessionalism.

“They are protective styles black women have used for their hair and to be discriminated against because of it is truly disgusting and unacceptable,” Tompkins said.

Despite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission considering treating someone differently based on hair texture race discrimination, many judges have not ruled in favor of plaintiffs suing employers for that kind of discrimination.

In 2016, a court ruled that Chastity Jones’ potential employer was allowed to ban dreadlocks.

In 2014, the United States Army prohibited dreadlocks altogether in their hair grooming policies but the Army changed that rule in 2017, allowing (limited) dreadlock styles after several complaints and reviewing the guidelines.

“There’s no reason why a white person should feel allowed to tell me that I can’t wear my hair the way that I want (because) it’s too black for their store image,” Tompkins wrote.

A spokesperson from Banana Republic stated that “as a company, we have zero tolerance for discrimination. We take this matter very seriously and we are actively conducting an investigation. We are committed to upholding an inclusive environment where our customers and our employees feel respected."