Incident 332: Google Image Showed Racially Biased Results for “Professional” Hairstyles

Description: Google Image search reportedly showed disparate results along racial lines, featuring almost exclusively white women for “professional hairstyles” and black women for “unprofessional hairstyles” prompts.

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Alleged: Google developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Black women , Black people and Google users.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
332
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2016-04-05
Editors
Khoa Lam
Woman is shocked by 'racist' Google search results
dailymail.co.uk · 2016

A woman was left shocked after googling the phrase 'unprofessional hairstyles at work' and seeing that the results were all pictures of black women.

Bonnie Kamona, from Botswana, posted on Twitter: 'I saw a tweet saying "Google unprofession…

This Is the Appalling Result When You Google “Unprofessional” Hairstyles
teenvogue.com · 2016

Googling hairstyles is nothing new — many of us often hit up the search engine to find inspiration for our next cut, color, or music festival plait. But, as Mic reports, a recent search for “professional” and “unprofessional” styles, has re…

Why The Google Search Results For Unprofessional Hairstyles Are Seriously Disturbing
allure.com · 2016

The subject of women's hair choices in the workplace has long been a fraught topic, and it's infinitely more so for women of color who embrace their natural hair texture. It's the perfect storm of sexism and racism, and it's just the worst.…

Do Google's 'unprofessional hair' results show it is racist?
theguardian.com · 2016

Recently, an MBA student named Rosalia discovered something alarming: Googling “unprofessional hairstyles for work” yielded image results mainly of black women with natural hair, while searching for the “professional” ones offered pictures …

Variants

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