Classifying natural Black hair as unprofessional is assimilationist, not wearing permed styles

Evidence

The more African Americans let their Afros grow out like Grier’s in the early 1970s, the more they faced the wrath of assimilationist parents, preachers, and employers, who called Afros ugly, “a disgrace”—like going “back to the jungle.” African Americans were assimilationists not when they permed their own hair, but when they classified natural styles as unprofessional or aesthetically inferior to permed styles. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1037

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely sharpens the assimilationist category: it is defined by the judgment that natural Black styles are inferior/unprofessional, not by the act of perming itself — a clean test for placing any hair or cultural argument.
• ADDENDUM: Extends the immodesty-assimilationist thread: ‘Afro as unprofessional/fashion statement’ parallels how moral panic over a bodily presentation encodes class and political signaling.