How does our relationship with beauty and hair influence how we feel about ourselves? And how is our relationship with beauty impacted by others? For folks with minoritized identities, like people of the African diaspora, how beauty ideals impact identity and sense of place in the world is even more critical because of the way racism influences the dominant standard of beauty. In the latest podcast episode, Dr. Teiahsha Bankhead joins Dr. Tamarra James-Todd to explore some of these themes and what it means for moving beauty justice forward. 

Dr. Teiahsha Bankhead, Ph.D., LCSW, is the Executive Director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and Professor Emeritus in the Division of Social Work at California State University, Sacramento. She is a licensed psychotherapist with a Master’s in Social Work and a Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Bankhead uses a mixed methods approach, combining both quantitative data (numerical data) and qualitative data (data describing experiences and providing context) in her research. She holds sharing and listening circles on subjects including but not limited to school-based restorative justice, race and restorative justice, and truth-telling and racial healing. She was a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Minority Research Fellow, and a United States Psychiatric Congress fellow.

Read Dr. Bankhead and co-author Dr. Johnson’s article here: Hair It Is: Examining the Experiences of Black Women with Natural Hair

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