Young Cartagena says he was refused to work in a hotel because he had “afro hair”

Although some people insist on denying that there is still racist behavior in Colombia, a 23-year-old man reported that when he went to apply for his professional internship at a hotel in Cartagena, he was rejected because he had afro hair. The events happened recently at the Cartagena Plaza hotel to where Victor Padilla went to apply for a job.

Padilla is a young man from Cartagena who studied on the Seine and is now a technician in computer network installation; however, to finish his preparation process he has to do a semester of internship applying what he learned in a formal job. In dialogue with Caracol Radio, the young man said that he applied virtually to a call opened by the hotel to work as support in the area of systems.

After Víctor's application was accepted, he was asked to carry out tests virtually, to verify his knowledge in the area and, the next day, he was summoned to the hotel in order to conduct an interview. “First the head of the systems area interviews me and everything goes well, then they send me to a second interview with the hotel's human resources manager and that's when the bololó starts.”

As the young man told the station, when the human resources manager of the Cartagena Plaza hotel sees him, he tells him that there is a problem with his physical appearance. “We had a pleasant conversation, I even told her that I also studied Social Promotion at the University of Cartagena, when I tell her that she asks me 'how communist are you? ' ... He cuts me off when I'm explaining that I'm a youth leader in my community and he says 'I hope you've been taught to abide by standards on the Seine... what is your appearance? ' ”.

A little confused, Padilla expresses to the woman that, in addition to her profession, she is an artist and actor, but that she knows that all companies have some rules to comply with; however, she is surprised that the human resources manager was referring to her hair. “He told me 'you have to take that off' and points to my hair, but he refers to me as if my hair were something,” said the young man stating that his hair is afro and with 'wedges' or 'rollers'.

Padilla assures that the woman tells him that he cannot be “with it like this” attending to the people of the hotel and that if he does not cut it off they will not give him the job. For his part, the young student tells him that he does not understand why his hair is a problem for the hotel, “I am always combed and my hair is always neat... my hair is my expression of resistance to the racism that I have always suffered”, he stressed to the station.

According to the young man told El Universal, the woman showed him on the computer the company's protocols, in which it was established that women should be with straight hair and men with short hair. Although he suggested getting some braids, the woman flatly refused and sent him to talk to the psychologist, and insisted that his work skills were appropriate, but they would not accept him with that hair.

Now Victor Padilla filed a guardianship against the hotel for having “racist protocols”, he said that “it is necessary for hotels in Cartagena to change that vision of bleaching the city and of rejecting black people for the simple fact of what their hair looks like, because it bothers them that our hair is in offices or that occupy some place where they are because they feel uncomfortable”, he told the regional media.

For its part, the Blu Radio station consulted Javier Ortiz Cassiani, a historian who told them that this is an “obvious case of racism”. For Ortiz that Victor denounces the case is necessary so that these practices stop normalizing and demonstrate that the young man himself recognizes himself and identifies racist behavior.

“What it demonstrates are several things, on the one hand, a continuum of racist practices in a mostly black city like Cartagena; and also a lack of protocols around the ethnic and racial issue, the treatment of racialized subjects in a city like Cartagena, which is still moving under the historical prejudices that have acted on this population,” said the historian.

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