Ingrid Banks

Ingrid Banks, Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will complete a paper on contemporary manifestations of racial segregation and integration in black beauty salons. Banks’ preliminary data suggests that while black salon owners would welcome a more integrated clientele, segregation persists. Yet segregation in such black-owned private businesses is not viewed as a significant social problem – in stark contrast to how segregation is viewed in public sector settings such as schools and workplaces. Banks will use this case study to explore broad questions pertaining to how cultural and racial barriers are at once contested and accepted in the early twenty-first century.