A black manager at a DevaCurl brand hair salon says the SoHo location is a hotbed of racism and she was fired after years of speaking out against it, according to her new $1.5 million lawsuit.
Charisse Samuel says she started with the company in 2015 and while working at the DevaCurl salon on Broome Street called, Devachan, she saw rampant racism by white employees toward black staff and clients, according to her Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.
The Devachan Hair and Spa and Devacurl product line — which cater specifically to curly-haired women — was trying to expand from their mainly Jewish clientele base to include black women as well by trying to hire more black staff, the suit says.
“However, many of the white employees of the company had an extremely hostile and racist reaction to the black client base and black employees, and they in turn created a racially hostile work environment,” the suit filed late Thursday alleges.
Samuel “routinely” heard white stylists call black women’s hair “too big,” the “wrong texture,” “completely unmanageable,” or “dirty,” and they would “just barely rinse the hair of black clients,” while using gloves, which they never used on white clients, the court papers claim.
The white staff complained black customers didn’t tip well and the employees gave black clients poor service leaving them “sitting in the washing station or in the salon chairs while they sat in the break room socializing with other stylists,” the suit alleges.
White employees, “openly used stereotypical ‘black’ voice inflections when dealing with black and Hispanic clients,” and would refer to black customers as “ghetto,” “hood,” “rachet,” and other offensive slurs, the suit says.
And the company hired black workers as “tokens” who weren’t given a real chance to advance, the court documents claim.
The 46-year-old Crown Heights, Brooklyn woman says she consistently reported her concerns about racism to the higher-ups who brushed them under the rug, the court documents allege.
Once, Samuel had a fight with a white male stylist in February 2018 that escalated to him saying she’s racist toward white people and screaming at her that she’s a b—h and that she “lives in the ghetto,” the lawsuit alleges. That employee was fired, the court papers say.
She also faced pregnancy discrimination in 2015 — that a pregnant white woman didn’t — when she fought for accommodations like leaving early for doctors appointments, getting uninterrupted lunch breaks and time off of her feet, the court documents claim.
Because she involved human resources, her boss retaliated by moving her desk to the broom closet inside a “staff locker room where everyone went to the bathroom,” the suit alleges.
When she came back from the leave she was put on the evening shift as her day shift had been given to someone else. The company also began putting more menial responsibilities on her, the court papers say.
Despite rising to the task and being overworked, her “wages were parallel to the earnings of the front desk concierge,” the suit claims.
Samuel said she was fired on a pretense in the Summer of 2018 for failing to fulfill the “impossible” requirement, that no one else was given, to spend 90% of her time on the salon floor while also fulfilling all the other administrative tasks she was expected to finish the suit says.
Samuel is still unemployed, her lawyer, Megan Goddard told The Post.
Goddard said Samuel “regularly objected” to the discrimination she saw in the Salon.
But, “Instead of addressing the insidious racism … Devachan management treated her as the problem, subjected her to severe and humiliating discrimination and retaliation, including converting a broom closet into her ‘office,’ and ultimately unlawfully terminated her,” Goddard said.
A salon rep said, “At DevaCurl, discrimination of any kind is not tolerated. We are always striving to make DevaCurl a respectful and inclusive environment for all our stylists, employees and clients.
“Because this matter is pending litigation we will not comment further.”