Do Google's 'unprofessional hair' results show it is racist?

Search term brings back mainly results of black women, which some say is evidence of bias. But algorithms may just be reflecting the wider social landscape

Recently, an MBA student named Rosalia discovered something alarming: Googling "unprofessional hairstyles for work" yielded image results mainly of black women with natural hair, while searching for the "professional" ones offered pictures of coiffed, white women. Often the hair styles themselves were not vastly different -- only the hair type and the wearer's skin.

Rosalia's tweet has since been retweeted thousands of times - more than 6,200 in the first 24 hours, she says - as her discovery sparked discussion on implicit racial biases against black people in the workplace. Can an algorithm itself be racist? Or is it only reflecting the wider social landscape?