Too Many Rules Protect Power, Position

What do African-style hairbraiders and stodgy economists have in common? More than you ever might have imagined.

According to professors who teach something called “public choice theory,” government regulation is often used to restrict competition and protect industries with political clout.

Public-choice theorists make their case in obscure academic journals. But some of the most convincing teachers of this basic lesson don’t need textbook formulas to prove the point. In inner-city storefronts from Washington state to Washington, D.C., African-style hairbraiders are battling the effects of restrictive business regulations.

And they’re winning.

Take Taalib-Din Uqdah, owner of Cornrows, Co. in the District of Columbia. Uqdah’s tough course in the politics of regulation began four years ago when city inspectors demanded that he obtain an occupational license in cosmetology to run his hair-braiding business. The license required a year of training in everything from manicures to eyebrow arching at a cost of thousands of dollars - but none of the classes covered hairbraiding techniques and other African styles.

“I don’t have any problem with government wanting to protect public health and safety,” Uqdah explained to me last week. “But the city’s code required me to go to an expensive cosmetology school for a year and learn chemical techniques and practices that have nothing to do with what we do. Complying would have killed my company - and pushed many other law-abiding minority business owners underground.”

Uqdah is blunt when asked why the city would crack down on hairbraiders: “We’re new, we’re popular, we’re a threat. Licensing is a way for old-line cosmetologists to squash a growing cottage industry of people who are skilled in a cultural art form that’s foreign to them.”

Uqdah and his wife successfully challenged the city’s outdated cosmetology code with legal help from the nonprofit Institute for Justice based in D.C. As a result, the D.C. government deregulated the cosmetology industry and allowed hairbraiders to obtain a separate operating license with sensible training requirements.

To spread the word, Uqdah founded the American Hairbraiders and Natural Hair Care Association. One member in Memphis, Tenn., pushed successfully for creation of a “natural hair styling” license that requires one-third the hours of instruction required of cosmetologists. And in San Diego this month, the association and the Institute for Justice moved forward with a federal civil-rights suit against the state cosmetology board on behalf of African American studies professor and hairbraider JoAnne Cornwell.

Cornwell, who has been braiding hair since she was a young girl, sees this as a fight not only for the “economic liberty rights of hairbraiders,” but for many other working poor immigrants and minorities struggling to enter the work force.

A victory looks promising. Two weeks ago, federal court judge Rudi Brewster rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Observing that only 4 percent of the required curriculum actually relates to health and safety - the state’s supposed “compelling interest” in regulating hairbraiding - Brewster concluded that the rules place “an almost insurmountable barrier in front of anyone who seeks to practice African hair styling,” the effect of which “is to force African hair stylists out of business in favor of mainstream hair stylists and barbers.”

The case could have significant impact here in Washington state, which has almost identical state regulations covering hairbraiders, including 1,600 hours of traditional cosmetology classes. “I definitely think a lot of my training was not relevant,” says Renee Stewart, owner of Braids 4 Dayz in the Rainier Valley. “We spent a lot of time learning to straighten hair and work with chemicals. But I don’t use them. What’s worse is that none of the classes I took ever addressed African hairstyles.”

Economist Milton Friedman wrote in “Capitalism and Freedom,” “In practice, the considerations taken into account in determining who shall get a license often involve matters that, so far as a layman can see, have no relation whatsoever to professional competence.”

Shari Hamilton, owner of Sista’s United of Styles in Seattle, says it better. “They don’t teach you nothing about nothing. I think it’s more of a money and power thing.” Hamilton wishes she could have used some of the money she “spent on useless training to hire a few more employees instead.” Straight up.

Critics of welfare reform complain there aren’t enough jobs to absorb new entrants into the marketplace. But Uqdah of the American Hairbraiders and Natural Hair Care Association has a message for politicians from President Clinton on down: “Open your eyes! I alone could put 3,000 people to work if we got rid of all the insane barriers and rules that keep people from earning an honest living.”

The message is easy to discount when delivered by ivory-tower intellectuals - but impossible to ignore when sounded by small-business owners fighting for their livelihoods, off the chalkboards, out of the theoretical realm, in living color.

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