In theory yeah, but in practice, most stylists work with clientele that has a similar hair texture, and thus same race. Even when I lived in a mostly white neighborhood, I still had to look for a black hair stylist, which meant traveling to a different town. Just think of it as, would you take advice for hair care from someone who has completely different hair than yours, will never use those products on themself, only worked on hair like yours a couple times in school, and hasn’t worked on hair curlier than beach waves since? If another black girl went to a white hairstlyist and vouched for them, then that’s a different story. It’s the same with makeup artists, tattoo artists, and dermatologists for me, you want to go to someone who you know has experience working on skin like yours.

No, products for textured hair are different.

In a perfect world, yes, but beauty standards have long pushed for straight hair as the norm to the point where a lot of black women begin relaxing their hair very young. There’s also a stigma in a lot of professional settings that natural hair isn’t professional enough, to the point where some office and school policies would ban natural hair styles. Which is why the Crown Act had to be instated in the first place.

It’s gotten better in recent years, a lot more black women including myself are going completely natural. But even then, a lot of people have noted that the natural hair community does still have a “texturism” problem where looser curls and completely slicked edges are preferred. Some hairstylists won’t even work on 4c hair.