It’s dehumanizing because, as another sentence in the piece states, for every white person arguing that they should be allowed to wear box braids, there are a dozen black women being told that they don’t meet professional dress code for wearing their hair that way.

The distinction between it being not only acceptable but “cool” on a white head when mining for cultural cachet but “unprofessional” on a black head is a clear demonstration that it is the blackness that is the problem. That’s the dehumanization . The hair and the controversy don’t make it exist- our society does that- but the dichotomy is a damning illustration of it.