You'd think that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison would be busy trying to get to the root of the billions of dollars in fraud that's taken place under his nose, or be watching the immigration fraud investigation into his colleague Ilhan Omar develop, but instead, he's suing L’Oréal for selling toxic hair products to black women.

Jeff Day reports for The Minnesota Star Tribune:

Building off historic racist stereotypes, the largest cosmetics company in the world knowingly marketed and sold hair products that increased cancer risks to Black women and girls, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

…

“It’s outrageous that L’Oréal marketed these products to Black women and girls as safe when they knew they were not and had a duty to disclose they were not,” Ellison said in a prepared statement. “Humans of all ages, genders, and colors are free to do whatever they like with their hair. Women who wish to straighten their hair have a right to choose the products they want to use — but those products must be safe and must not expose them to higher risks of cancer.”

A L’Oréal USA spokesperson contested the conclusions reached by Ellison’s office and said in a prepared statement that the company’s “highest priority is the health and wellbeing of all our consumers” and that its products are rigorously evaluated by scientists “who also ensure that we strictly follow all regulations in every market in which we operate.”

…

The Attorney General’s Office positions the modern issues around chemical hair relaxers as an extension of historic racial tropes and biases toward the hair of Black women in America.

It notes several contexts where the hair of Black women was positioned as “inferior, unkept, and unprofessional, leading to negative consequences for individuals who choose to wear their hair in its natural state.”

Because of those biases, the suit claims, Black women have “straightened, or otherwise hidden, their natural hair” and chemical relaxers have played a key role in that process.

Ellison is the only historic racist stereotype involved here. The story doesn't mention any instances of women who were harmed by these supposedly toxic products, only that women have used them because of anti-black-hair bias.

This reminds us of the Biden administration's support for the CROWN Act (the Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act of 2022), which "would prohibit discrimination based on hair texture and protective hairstyles that are commonly associated with a particular race or national origin, including locs, cornrows, braids, twists, Bantu knots, and Afros."

All the victims, obviously, or their surviving family members.

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So L’Oréal exploited women suffering from bigotry against their natural hair and forced them to buy its toxic products? Again, who's the victim in this lawsuit? Does Ellison even have any proof that anyone's been harmed?

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