Should white people have dreadlocks?

It is harder to get a job if you have dreadlocks

Question: Should white people have dreadlocks?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, white people should not have dreadlocks
Argument‹2 of 4›: It is harder to get a job if you have dreadlocks

Most work environments discourage dreadlocks, citing them as unclean, unprofessional, or unsafe for work.

The argument

Whatever is said about the wider cultural question, there is a practical cost attached to the choice, and it falls on the person who makes it. Companies usually frown upon employees with dreadlocks, owing to a negative connotation of being unprofessional that attaches to the hairstyle itself. The objection takes different forms in different kinds of work. In blue-collar jobs dreadlocks can pose a safety hazard, depending on hair length and the occupation; if a fireman were to have dreads, that would pose an extreme safety hazard. In stricter white-collar professions the objection is presentational rather than physical: employers discourage dreadlocks by deeming them unhygienic and associating them with marijuana. The two objections have little in common except their effect, which is to narrow the range of jobs realistically open to someone wearing the style. That effect is not hypothetical. In the US, a woman with short, clean dreadlocks was given the choice of changing her hair or losing her new job, her boss claiming that dreadlocks tended to become messy and were not professional. The detail that her locks were short and clean is what makes the case instructive: the stated grounds did not describe her hair, which suggests the reaction was to the style as such rather than to anything about its upkeep. She walked out of the job and decided to keep her dreads — and the price of that decision was the job itself. The conclusion drawn here is a prudential one. Dreadlocks get in the way of people's professional lives, and someone who adopts them takes on an employment penalty that the surrounding workplace culture has attached to the style and that no individual can negotiate away. On that basis, white people should not have dreadlocks.

Premises

[P1]Dreadlocks carry negative professional connotations and can pose safety or hygiene concerns in many workplaces. [P2] People with dreadlocks face real consequences, such as being forced to choose between their hair and their job. [P3] Adopting a hairstyle that impedes employment is imprudent when one could avoid those barriers. [C] Therefore, white people should not have dreadlocks because doing so makes it harder to get and keep a job.

Counter-arguments

Instead of forcing people to change their dreadlocks for work, companies should be more accepting of peoples' choices and personal expression. Society and workplace culture have evolved enough to be accepting of atypical hairstyles. Forming dreadlocks is a lengthy process, and most are able to wear them for years. Forcing someone to brush out or cut off their dreadlocks renders a long and tedious process pointless and suppresses individual style.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Companies should be more accepting of dreadlocks.