“I’ve been very nervously monitoring Trump’s popularity and chance of winning the election,” said Chris Ahn, a Korean-American man living in Brooklyn. “ I think right now we’re at 75-25 split going towards Biden.”

Hope for many Asian Americans is connected to a Biden victory in November. Many of them had experienced anti-Asian remarks or microaggressions.

Eunice Paik, a Korean-American leasing agent experienced anti-Asian sentiment. Photo Courtesy of Eunice Paik

“I remember I opened the door for a family, two older ladies and their two children and they just gave me the dirtiest look,” said Eunice Paik, a Korean American woman and 13-year New York resident. I was giving a kind gesture, and they sneered at me.”

When the murder of George Floyd inspired nationwide protests over the summer Asian Americans felt a call to action that overrode cultural norms that discourage complaining and speaking out. 

“I definitely was concerned about African-Americans being treated badly and many of my AfricanAmerican friends telling me they were afraid of the police,” said Dr. Alex Pothen, an Indian-American man living in West Lafayette, Indiana. “This cannot go on. This is indicative of a much deeper systemic racial problem in our country that we need to address.”

But addressing the problem proved to be challenging. For some, it was a struggle to know where their own identity fit in a conflict defined by blackness and whiteness.

“There’s kind of this tendency to say, ‘Well, Asians are really kind of white, aren’t they’,” said Chang Kim, a Korean-American man living in Brooklyn. “Kind of carving out Asians as a special kind of person of color, as in like. ‘Well you’re like, kind of a person of color, but you’re also kinda…so I wasn’t sure where I fit in.”

Others wanted to attend protests, but stayed home out of health concerns. Some have found more behind-the-scenes methods to promote racial justice. For families with means, that meant keeping their kids at home this fall so that parents who needed to work would be able to send their kids to school.

Bonita Price, a Canadian citizen of Filipino ancestry struggles to explain racism to her children. Photo Courtesy of Bonita Price

“As a family, we’ve had to make a choice,” said Bonita Price, a mother of four children who has Filipino heritage and Canadian citizenship living in Brooklyn. “…we’re going to try to online school as much as possible and enjoy it so that other kids can actually go to school in your place.”

For some there is a sense that the shine had come off the American dream. The hope of a prosperous life based on equal opportunity had been removed. Underneath was an ugly truth of racism and oppression.

“I think we’re in an apocalyptic moment,” said Kim. “As we all know from Sunday School apocalypse means an unveiling. I think that this unveiling has really made clear to me that there’s something really broken about America.”

The prospect of a Trump victory in November creates anxiety. For Price, it was grounds for moving her family to Canada. Even though her experience was that Canadians were more racist than New Yorkers, she noted that the Canadian government treated people of Asian descent better.

“They were sending televised messages: ‘do not discriminate against Asians because of the virus,’” Price said. “But it’s the opposite in the U.S. We might feel safe in New York, but if your government is sending messages of hate [and] discrimination it’s hostile.”

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Sydney Fishman is a graduate student in Reporting the Nation/NY in Multimedia.

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Kadija Kone,  still remembers the first time she read a book with a main character that looked like her. She had to read the book for her third grade class. The girl in the book from the reading had the same curly hair and dark skin.

Kone, 17,  of Queens, said she was teased by her classmates for resembling the girl. Her class made up black and latino kids found it strange to have a black character as the focus. But Kadija felt a sense of pride, familiarity and confidence that someone in her school book looked like her.

“We need to see characters that represent us because it is empowering,” said Kone, who is also a youth leader at the advocacy group, IntegrateNYC, that fights for integration and equity in city schools. “We need to know that we are beautiful and can go on to achieve anything we put our minds too. If I want to be a scientist, I want to read about a scientist that looks like me.”

According to a report by the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) blacks and hispanics make up more than two-thirds of the public school enrollment but authors and characters that represent this majority are mostly absent from the elementary school reading list.

Parents and the CEJ are calling on the Department of Education to adopt a more culturally responsive curriculum city-wide. They want books to reflect students of color because they believe this form of positive reinforcement will lead to more success in their respective communities.

According to the CEJ report, about 84 percent of the authors used in elementary schools are white.

“It is not right that our books and curriculum do not reflect the most diverse city in the country,” said Natasha Capers, CEJ Coordinator, and mother of two elementary aged kids. “It’s not right that our kids can go through the system and not read about people that represent them until they chose to or are in college.”

The CEJ report goes on to show that 10 optional reading lists widely used in city schools are dominated by white authors and characters – 118 titles feature white authors and about 22 books are written by nonwhites.

In February, this frustration with the lack of a culturally representative curriculum boiled over, resulting in parents, students and the CEJ protesting on the steps of the Tweed Court in Lower Manhattan, which is the home of the DOE.

Adofo Muhammad, principal at Bedford Academy High School in Brooklyn said that parents and students shouldn’t be the ones protesting. He said teachers should recognize what will engage their students and lobby for the DOE to diversify the curriculum.

“It’s our job as educators to demand that we have culturally representative works for our students, everyone has to be included,” he said. “We are molding the minds of our future generations.”

He added that when students of color see themselves positively represented it breaks down years of mythology that their superstardom is only reached by sports or music.

“It’s all about positive reinforcement to students to allow them to dream bigger than they ever could,” said Muhammad. “No matter what happens to children in life we should always give kids the best tools to be the best them.”  

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza since being appointed has expressed support for a more diverse reading list and the DOE has noted that the city has set aside $23 million for anti-bias and culturally responsive training for school staffers.

“Our students should see themselves in the books they read and the lessons they’re taught,” said Danielle Filson, spokeswoman for the DOE in a released statement. “We’re prioritizing a culturally responsive curriculum that includes a diverse range of voices.”

The DOE did not respond to emails asking how or when they plan to make the curriculum more culturally responsive.

Kiesha Griffin has a child enrolled in a District 9 elementary school in the Bronx. She wants her child and students of color throughout New York City to know of where they come from. She said that direct representation opens up their imaginations and keeps students engaged.

“It engages them, they pay attention,” said Griffin. “We have had enough of teaching our kids about Europe and how they colonized the world. Stop whitewashing our history to our kids.”

The CEJ and parents want the DOE to start culturally responsive curriculums by this summer. They also request that the DOE stop working with textbook and publishing companies that refuse to diversify learning materials.  

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Beneath a banner reading “Our Great Eight Candidates” Martha Johnson, 73, was working for every vote. Despite heavy rain in the area, she still showed up at the Democratic field office in Brunswick, Georgia to phone bank for Stacey Abrams, the first African American female candidate for governor and other local candidates. She did not break focus from the job at hand.

“I’m making phone calls,” Johnson said. “This is the ground plan, make contact with everybody and encourage early voting, absentee voting and give them deadline dates.”

Johnson’s prior involvement in the campaign efforts were through social media, but she recently made the commitment to phone bank at the field office because she was incensed by the Republican candidate for governor and current Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp’s alleged attempts to suppress Democratic votes.

“I’m really into Stacey,” she said. “For more reasons than one. Mainly because Kemp’s attempt at voter suppression kind of ignited a fight in me. So I’m fighting.”

In recent weeks, national attention focused on the governor’s race in Georgia because a controversial, “exact match” law that passed a year ago has 53,000 voters’ registration status on hold. In what appears to be a major conflict of interest,  Kemp is responsible for state elections and voter registration records as Georgia’s Secretary of State, while he is actively campaigning to be governor.

Abrams has made encouraging voting a priority throughout her career, but has ramped up get out the vote efforts following Kemp’s acknowledgement he is concerned about voter turnout on the democratic side.

Abrams appeared alongside Common and  cicil rights icon Andrew Young to express the importance of voting, especially in this election. Photo by Emma Bolton.

At a recent ‘Souls to the Polls’ rally in Midtown Atlanta, Abrams brought civil rights icon, former UN ambassador, former Atlanta Mayor and former congressman,  Andrew Young, as well as actor and rapper, Common to rally and march to a local polling place, highlighting the importance of voting.

“We have to vote,” Abrams said. “And we know voting works, because if it didn’t work they wouldn’t be working so hard to make sure we couldn’t cast a ballot. In fact, my opponent said this week, he said ‘well look, I’m very concerned if everyone who is eligible to vote cast a ballot she might win.’ Let’s prove him right.”

In South Georgia, the Glynn County Democratic Party Co-Chair, Audrey Gibbons said that getting every potential voter in her area to the polls was crucial to Abrams’ strategy for winning state wide.

“We know we’ve got to turn out the vote for Stacey Abrams to win,” Gibbons said. “And I mean turn out the vote. In District 5 alone in Glynn County we have 14,000 registered voters. That’s enough to turn Glynn County blue.”

Similarly in North Georgia, the Lumpkin County Democratic Party Chair, Ken Akin encouraged volunteers to keep organizing by touting how successful they had already been in increasing voter turnout in the area.

“Every day since we started early voting we have had over a 300% increase over 2014,” he said. “I think we are going to be proud of the results that we are going to see on Election Day. It’s getting purple.”

In Northern Georgia, the Lumpkin County Democratic Party held a get out the vote rally in tandem with the Democratic National Committee and the Georgia Democratic Party. They marched from the town square in Dahlonega to a local polling station to campaign for Stacey Abrams and other local candidates. Photo by Maggie Garred.

Chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party, Dubose Porter attended the rally on Saturday with the Lumpkin County Democratic Party and representatives from the Democratic National Committee in Dahlonega to inform voters about early voting opportunities. It was one of many get out the vote events happening simultaneously across the state.

“We are everywhere, especially today,” Porter said. “There are 80 launch sites for canvassers, so we’re in neighborhoods, just all over the state to remind people what’s at stake this election and now is the time to go vote. There is Saturday voting all over the state today, so we thought we would take today fan out all over the state.”

Porter stressed that the stakes in the election were extremely high. He pointed to Abrams commitment to expanding Medicaid, investing in public education and pushing for diversity as reasons she needed to be elected.

“Are we going to help and lift up everybody or continue to just help a few?” he asked. “That’s what’s at stake. How we change that is, go vote and take somebody with you. And do it today on Saturday and take another crew on Monday and go every day next week ‘til Friday, until we’ve run out of people by November the 6th.”

Although voter purges and exact match laws threaten Abrams’ strategy to win by encouraging historically non-voting populations to vote, Glynn County school board candidate, Regina Johnson, was optimistic that efforts to expand the Democratic voter pool could still turn the state of Georgia blue.

Johnson said Abrams had come to Brunswick’s First African Baptist Church to speak with the community about being civically engaged and educated about issues on the ballot three years prior to running for governor. She saw that long term investment from Abrams as an asset for local candidates and volunteers as they work to get out the vote in 2018 Midterms.

The Democratic Field Office in Glynn County is right in front of First African Baptist Church, where Stacey Abrams spoke to congregants three years ago about the importance of being civically engaged. Photo by Emma Bolton.

“Stacey Abrams came to our church and began a conversation about educating our voters in our community,” Johnson said. “What began three years ago as a conversation is now really in force today.”

Martha Johnson was optimistic that people had responded well to Abrams’ message and had taken the time to vote early after a few hours of making calls to Glynn County constituents.

“This morning, luckily, most have voted,” she said. “So that’s good.”

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Miles Mims still remembers the day he was arrested in Virginia for stepping onto a beach marked “whites only.”

“On the black beach, everyone was huddled together, hundreds and hundreds of people on one side of this thin red line,” Mims said. He looked at the floor, drawing a line across his feet with his hands. “The ‘white’ beach — well, it had more space and it was cleaner.”

That was back in the late 1950s, when Mims was about 8 years old.

“I didn’t pay no attention to those things back then,” he said.

But 50 years later, Mims hasn’t been able to shake the memory. He’s now a full-time artist, photographing portraits of black Americans to raise awareness of civil rights issues.

“Social injustices — they’re in my fabric of being,” Mims said. “When I look at things now, I do it through that lens. I can’t help it.”

Mims — along with about a dozen other local artists — are currently displaying their work at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens.

It’s the second year that the Social Justice Art Show comes to the eastern borough, and features work from artists focusing on racial discrepancies in the criminal justice system.

Wanda Best is the show’s director and also has artwork featured in the exhibit.

She said the exhibit ran for one night last year, down the street at the King Manor Museum.

“We had over a hundred people show up that night,” Best said.

This year, the show will run for two weeks.

“There’s something powerful about combining art and social issues in this way,” Best said. “People look at these exhibitions and they won’t walk out of here thinking the same way about these things.”

Best worked with Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) to start the exhibit in 2016.

“These issues, these problems, they’re not talked about as much as they should be,” Best said. She pointed at one of her paintings. “This one is about mass incarceration — they’re locking up African Americans way more often than whites or Hispanics.”

“This is our chance to change the way people think about these issues,” Best said.

Pieces in the exhibition include all types of artistic mediums, like woodworking and interactive visual pieces.

Some installations focus on the role of African American women in society, while others call attention to the years of slavery.

Mims has two photos on display in the exhibit — a portrait of a woman and one of a man.

He pointed at the photo of the man.

“That was down in Manhattan, by Seaport,” he said.

Mims said he approached the man because he liked his “look” and asked him if he could take his photo.

“The guy was really upset because he couldn’t get a job and I said ‘having that afro and beard don’t help,’” Mims said. “But he had this look of determination on his face.”

Mims said the man was biracial and spoke to Mims about the struggles of not fitting into a society where a hard line is drawn between being black or white.

“After talking to him, I started to realize some things,” Mims said. “I used to automatically look at the way people treated me and asked myself, ‘is it because I’m black?’ I used to control my behavior to make sure I didn’t do nothing to offend anyone and I would still get hostility.”

“It was hurtful,” Mims said. “But I examined it and started to realize what prejudice was all about. All I can do with my art is express what I have inside me and try to make people who look at it a better person. That’s all I can hope.”

The show runs through September 29th.

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Brittney Rodriguez is an 11-year-old ball of energy. She bounced from her spot, kneeling on the floor in her black dress, to the other side of the white-walled classroom, looking for a hot glue gun. She eagerly announced to anyone who would listen that she wants to go to NYU and be a heart surgeon when she grows up.

Meanwhile, a few inches from her, Pamela Flores and Brianna Gonzalez, both 11, sat cross-legged between a table and the wall, putting pieces of grey paper onto a large sheet and giggling, swapping stories about mutual friends from school. They were making a background for an “Angry Birds” project.

The girls were at a Friday afternoon session of NYC Sparx at St. Mary’s Recreation Center, in the South Bronx. The center is located off of a wide avenue and has an adjoining basketball court and playground, but these girls stayed inside, in their classroom on the second floor whose walls are littered with posters and messages declaring “Sparx Rocks” or “Girls Rule.” There they learned about technology and how to be creative within STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — fields.

NYC Sparx is an outreach of NYC Parks and Recreation’s Computer Resource Center (CRC) with the goal of helping young girls in the Bronx mine their interest in technology and combine that with the arts.

Laira Reid helps Kaylee Torres, 11, with a project at NYC Sparx in the South Bronx
Photo by Karis Rogerson

“The Bronx was chosen since most of the STEM programs available are located in Manhattan and other boroughs,” Sparx Technology Director Laira Reid said. “We wanted to give the Bronx girls the opportunity to have access to a free STEM program that did not require them to travel to another borough. Not all of the girls would be able to afford the transportation costs or would be able to travel the distances safely.”

According to City Data, in 2013 30.7 percent of Bronx residents lived below the poverty level, compared to 14.6 percent in the rest of New York State. For a family of four, this would mean having an income of $23,834 or less, according to the Census Bureau.

Most of the girls who attend NYC Sparx are of Hispanic or African American backgrounds, Reid said. This makes sense, considering each group made up more than 40 percent of total population in the Bronx in 2014.

But those demographics are underrepresented in STEM fields. Latinos make up only 9 percent of STEM jobs, and African Americans (even men) hold few jobs.

Reid said one of the main challenges for girls from minority communities who want to get into technology, including Latina or African-American girls, is economics.

Brittney Rodriguez, 11, is making stick figures out of popsicle sticks to add to her 3D demonstration of what her birthday party will look like. Photo by Karis Rogerson

“Being into technology requires you to be able to play with the technology, this can get expensive,” she said. “If your family does not have expendable income, you may not have access to the newest technology available.”

In addition, a young girl’s location has a lot to do with her potential future in STEM.

“Living in a community that in and of itself does not have the money to attract technology business also means that in order to see it hands on you would have to travel,” Reid said. “This could be a problem if your family doesn’t have money for the rising cost of transportation to and from.”

Co-Director of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering Science and Technology Studies Christopher Leslie said whites and Asians make up the majority of students in STEM fields, while black, Latino, Pacific Islander and Native American numbers are much lower.

“It does seem that Asian and white men see a brighter future for STEM,” Leslie said. “When they encounter difficulties or have these experiences they know that it’s part of the education process of engineering. Students who don’t have a secure sense of the future won’t necessarily think that they should stick to it.”

Leslie also said that a person’s economic background has much to do with their success in STEM.

“Sometimes it seems like other people are having success because of their social class and not because of what they learn,” he said. “If you come from a less privileged background, you’re showing up at college needing to learn the content and how to study it, and that means that [you] don’t have the same advantage as other students. They might learn a lot, but at the end they’re going to be perceived as being less capable.”

NYC Sparx is for girls only, Reid said, because that allows the participants to open up and learn in a way they might not to if there were boys in the group.

“One of the conversations I had was, ‘How come there’s no boys here?’” she said. “I said, ‘Would you talk to me about the stuff we talk about if there were boys here? Would you even come?’ They say, ‘Oh, we would come, but we wouldn’t talk that much.’ And that’s why this is our group.”

Reid, 34, was recruited to help lead the program when it launched in July, she said, and works directly with young girls four days a week at two different locations. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she works at St. James Recreation Center and on Wednesdays and Fridays at St. Mary’s Recreation Center, both in the Bronx.

“I have to work on getting [the girls] to be proud of the fact that, yeah, you are a geek, you are a nerd, what’s wrong with that?” said Reid. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The people who are making the money, doing the innovative processes, are the geeks and the nerds.”

Pamela Flores, 11, uses a hot glue gun to put together a backdrop for an “Angry Birds” project at NYC Sparx.
Photo by Karis Rogerson.

Flores said that she enjoys coming to the class because she likes to create things.

“It’s really fun,” Flores said, “and it’s things that I like to do, like create things.”

She is especially fond of using the 3D printer, something Gonzalez also enjoys.

“I like to design things and since we have a 3D printer we can print [them],” Gonzalez said. “I would like to learn how to make people and from that learn how to do an animation.”

Reid said she feels like the impact they are having is greater than just teaching girls to embrace their love of technology.

“We have a lot of preteens,” she said. “People aren’t talking to them about some of the things they need to know as they’re getting older. And then it’s like, if you’re interested in technology, is anyone even telling you that it’s okay to do that as your profession? Having those discussions as a group helps them out a lot and those are one of my favorite times when we’re here.”

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Racial pressures flare as election tension heats up as seen on the steps of the capitol building in Texas United States

Some African-American voters feel they are under pressure in the Nov. 6 elections, whether it is pressure to back President Barack Obama, criticism about blacks voting by race or difficulty registering to vote because of new restrictions in a number of states or lack of citizenship.

Wanda Ward wants to be clear that she supports Obama not because he’s black and she’s black, but because she likes his character and his policies.

When Obama won the presidency in 2008, 96 percent of black voters cast their ballots for him, according to the Pew Research Center. Black Americans constitute 14 percent of the U.S. population, and 76 percent of them identify as Democrats, Pew reports.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reported that the majority of black voters have supported Democrats for president since the mid-1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, oversaw passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act to end racial discrimination. Black voters are expected to support Obama this year, in the race against Republican nominee Mitt Romney, by a margin of 97 to 3 percent.

The Pew Research Center reports that African-Americans made up 12.1 percent of the 131 million Americans who voted in 2008.

“Everyone expects black people to vote for Obama because we’re black,” said Ward, a black community member and graphic arts designer. “People think that people stick with their race, that’s the American way, people stick to themselves.

“I know black people who aren’t voting for Obama or don’t care for Obama. Honestly, I think that what gives him such clout is that he is an upstanding member of our community, he’s pretty clean cut, and also he’s down to earth, not white washed,” she said, adding that Obama’s marriage to a black woman, and his involvement with their two daughters, “gives us as minorities something to relate to, but that’s not why we’re voting; it’s just nice to see.”

Chris Hayes, host of the MSNBC opinion show “Up with Chris Hayes,” said on television that the claim that blacks vote by race more than other groups is ridiculous.

“The history of the American republic is black people having to vote for white people,” said Hayes, who is white. “No one votes for people of a different race more—more reliably and historically—than African-Americans, who just have been voting for white people for years and years and years and years. And you know who votes for white people, also? White people vote for white people.”

Still, some African American voters feel pressure to conform. Lisa Bayard, 22, a black woman and Obama supporter from Philadelphia, says the pressure started as the election heated up.

“All year around people barely care what’s going on but, come election time, black folks start antagonizing you on your beliefs and values and, if you don’t do this or vote for that, your community will suffer,” she said. “It’s just a major controversy.”

Changes to voting regulations also pose challenges, especially to minority groups, according to civil rights organizations. Fourteen states tightened voting regulations, with measures that range from requiring voter identification and limiting the acceptable forms of ID, to altering the voter registration process or disenfranchising felons.

NBC News reported that about one in eight African Americans would be unable to vote because of these changes.

Although courts have barred several states from implementing the laws during this election, the restrictions may still have an impact.

Minority empowerment groups have reacted to these new restrictions by criticizing measures they believe will repress voting by minority groups, especially African-Americans. The NAACP held a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland to try to raise international awareness of these issues.

“In the past year, more states in this country have passed more laws pushing more voters out of the ballot box than at any point since the dawn of Jim Crow,” NAACP president and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous told the meeting, referring to the racial segregation laws in the South that were overturned in the 1960s.

Even without the changes in registration, some African-Americans would be left out of the balloting. Immigrants from Africa totaled 1.6 million in 2010, 4.6 percent of those immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens, and immigrants from all lands account for 6.5 percent of voters, according to the Immigration Policy Center.

Salef Abou, a new citizen from the West African country of Mali, has not registered to vote and said he doesn’t understand how the American political system works.

“In Mali, we use the French political system. We have assemblies,” Abou, a student at LaGuardia Community College, said in French. “This Congress—Senate system I know nothing about.” If he were to vote, he said that Obama would be his choice.

Abou’s boss at the Central Park bicycle touring center is Mark Diop, a citizen whose parents come from Senegal. Diop said he thinks “old school” Mitt Romney is going to lose to Barack Obama.

“I’m voting for Obama because he’s more in touch with the middle class, [which I] would definitely consider myself a member,” he said.

Modest Akre an African immigrant from Burkina Faso, who has permanent resident status, has been working in this country for over three years but does not have citizenship or the right to vote.

“I would like to vote,” he said in French. “I pay many taxes each year, but I have no rights to say what I think about how this country is run. It’s the same in many other countries, so I just accept it.”

For many black Americans and immigrants from Africa, the 2012 elections are a time to reflect on what it really means to have a voice and to vote. For Diop, it means thinking about his parents.

“My mom works at a restaurant and my dad as a taxi driver,” he said. “Both of them pay taxes but neither of them can vote.”

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It was 10 p.m. on a recent Friday night and business was booming at The Experience Unisex Salon in Crown Heights. An interracial couple held an intimate conversation in French while they sat in the waiting area. A stylist tightly sewed wavy blonde extensions into her African-American customer’s hair. VH1 Soul played on the two large flat screen televisions filling the spacious salon with R & B.

Black-owned businesses like The Experience Unisex Salon are all over this working class neighborhood, which, according to the 2010 Census, is 72 percent black. But as gentrification seeps into the neighborhood, diversity has brought hope and new clients to this busy salon.

“We have clients of all backgrounds, Indian, White, Latinos, and Blacks,” said Khalil Wright, 37, the salon’s co-owner.

Wright and his partner Zakeyah Ryan, 32, opened the salon in 2006 and within three years noticed a change in clientele.

Blue-eyed and blond-haired, Nate Olson,29, has been a client of the Experience Unisex Salon since he moved to Crown Heights from Iowa three years ago.

“You can come here and talk to anyone about anything,” Olson said. “It’s definitely a place where all types of people catch up to talk about things going on in the community.”

The number of white residents in Crown Heights has increased 20 percent, according to the census data. For many of the black salon customers, this was their first time sharing a salon with white neighbors.

“I grew up in Crown Heights and before this shop, I’ve never been to a barbershop and a white man was in the chair,” said Amaechi Aneke, 30, as he watched his barber cutting a white customer’s hair.

On a recent visit, every customer was greeted with a hearty welcome from the staff and then waited patiently for a free stylist in one of the red, blue or yellow chairs.

“We are a black-owned business, but we don’t focus on the color of people, we see hair,” Ryan said.

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