Will the Black Hair Salon Survive?

     Sheree Whitfield, of the Real Housewives of Atlanta

For many black women, a trip to the salon is more than just pampering. A missed appointment can add hours to a black woman’s week—pulling through tangles and wrestling with blow-dryers and flatirons. More than the tiresome manual labor, missing a regular spot means missing the black salon experience: the enclave of warmth, comfort and fellowship guided gently by a stylist, who serves triple duty as BFF, therapist and family member all rolled into one.

Now the recession is forcing more and more women to skip their regular trip to the salon, putting the sacred contract between customer and stylist in peril. As the saying goes, when America catches a cold, black America catches the flu. In January, the Los Angeles Times reported that an online poll by the National Cosmetology Association revealed business was down for 70 percent of respondents. This can’t be good news for black hairstylists.

But I have confidence that the black salon will survive. For generations, black salons have been strong entrepreneurial ventures. But they have also often operated like mini bazaars, open markets for people to come in peddling purses, pies, dresses, DVDs—economic engines for whole communities.

Through good times and bad, the black salon has been an institution that has endured because of its special role in our community. “[Hairstyling] allows African-American women to help fashion an identity. … Like the church, it’s a cultured institution,” said Lanita Jacobs-Huey, author of From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women’s Hair Care.

In some African cultures, only relatives were considered trustworthy enough to work on a person’s hair. In the Mende tribe, offering to braid someone’s hair was a means of asking for her friendship. Translate that into a modern business context and it explains why white hair care manufacturers and practitioners have had a hard time breaking into the black barbering and salon businesses. Most black people remain most comfortable getting their hair done by one of their own.  This, however, is changing in our mobile society;

Will the black salon survive this economic downturn?

Of course it will.