I think back to when construction workers started growing their hair long and then even doing things like getting earrings. Authority figures like cops then seemed to start profiling them--when they used to be considered allies--as "possibly not a law abiding citizen" and "possibly a dope smoker." I think when the pro football coaches started letting it go, though, that's when all hell broke loose!  

The new NYC law is the kind of thing our city council busies itself promoting, along with resolutions on Israel and the like. Hence, the one religious right guy can more easily claim Victim Olympics victory.

Not pit olympics,

On that you are correct, because now everyone can wear dreads and cornrows without being accused of cultural appropriation. No one gets to be a victim over their hair.

I find her argument about white guys being able to wear hoodies and be master of the universe a bit shabby, though. There are still plenty of places with dress codes for white men. It's only after they have a billion that they can truly get away with it. Lots of people in the "heartland" probably still haven't got the message that this was a new signifier way of dressing for the powerful until they see a TV show like "Billions" or a biopic about Zuckerman suggest it to them. 

As I've mentioned on another thread, I'd like to see the spike heels = powerful women thing change.

Which reminds me: life in NYC as a handicapped person is really hell. They have made all kinds of laws decades ago that they have to fix discrimination on that front but still only like 1 of 5 subway stations are handicapped accessible. Most are actually difficult to navigate for anyone not hale and hearty.

Also, remains to be seen whether it can be proven that someone didn't get hired from an interview because of their hairstyle. Was it that or was it just that their lack of a tie or their excessive makeup didn't fit the company image?

I still maintain that you can't easily change culture by law or force, rather what works to change what is acceptable is exactly this: cultural appropriation, more people from more tribes not just accepting but adopting the signifiers and thereby changing their meaning.  A little old lady in tennis shoes used to mean someone very wacky.  Construction workers used to signify their tribe as anti-hippie by wearing crewcuts. A woman wearing pants to work used to signify a radical feminist. Afros were au courant for all races in the 1970's, I had one induced by a perm and experienced zero discrimination and no cries from black folks about cultural appropriation, they actually saw it as progress that others were admiring and adopting their easy care hairstyle solutions.

Then there's things other than the visual. When did punctuating a conversation with "sir" and "ma'am" become a signifier of a southerner and not just standard with people you don't know?

I don't get the term "sociopath" here - I just see a messed up dude. But play on, I'm done

It's dispiriting   here in  cloistered  Dagblog we can ´t  intelligently discuss bias.  Honestly saying what we think  and accepting that when someone  disagrees they  re not  just being ¨disagreeable¨ but  honestly saying what they think.

No doubt there 's really wise and perceptive guidance on this. I guess. Can ´t  recall it right now when I could use it..

 This isn't  going to be one more chapter in the Life of Flavius . I 'll  describe a couple of things I rely on instead.

I remember  a post card from the early 1900s.  Children in the foreground.  The adults in the background. Attending

a lynching.  And a snap shot  from Dachau. There taking a class- no sense wasting this  barracks on a late February afternoon. No one else there.

Describing  the lynching would seem like exploitation.

Dachau.  50  or 100 emaciated men , guarded , marching down the Hauptstrasse. Past women lined up in front of a bakery. And  men carrying brief cases -or lunch- going into the station. Dachau 's a suburb of Munich. No one looking up. They  were on their way for a day at the  BURO. The starving men on their way at employment at a wage carefully calculated for them to  become so weak there was no economic case for feed them at all. As described in a pithy memo from the SS  on display. With the last stage summarized:  usw : und-so- weiter

 RMR may seem not fully go the extra mile to  understand Zimmerman 's pressures and temptations  ; any one of our Jewish participants may  make allowances for Bibi when he lurches into allegiances with the Right.

But I´m not going to be the one who says that.