We spend a lot of time thinking about hair – how it looks, whether we like our hairdresser, what products can boost its curls or stop it going frizzy.

But people with traditionally European or Asian hair don’t have to spend much time thinking about whether they will be rejected from a job or not allowed to go to school because of their natural hair or their chosen hairstyle.

Unfortunately, the policing of hair is something that still exists, and it disproportionately affects black people.

Stories abound of the many ways in which black people are discriminated against because of their hair – from the student sent home from school for wearing braids to the woman who said she was turned away from a temping agency because her dreadlocks violated the dress code. In 2017, one black woman told the Women and Equalities Committee that she had been told by an agency to chemically straighten her hair if she wanted a job at Harrods.

New York just became the first city to ban discrimination based on Afro hair