How did hair become part of school dress codes? Some students see vestiges of racism

For as long as schools have enforced hairstyles as part of their dress codes, some students have seen the rules as attempts to deny their cultural and religious identities.

Nowhere have school rules on hair been a bigger flashpoint than in Texas, where a trial will take place this week to determine whether high school administrators can continue to punish a black teenager for refusing to cut his hair. The 18-year-old student, Darryl George, who wears his hair in locs tied to his head, has been kept out of his classroom since the start of the school year.

For school administrators, strict dress codes can be tools to promote uniformity and discipline. But advocates say the codes disproportionately affect students of color and the punishments disrupt the learning process. Under pressure, many Texas schools have eliminated boys-only hair length rules, while hundreds of districts maintain hair restrictions written into their dress codes.

Schools that enforce strict dress codes face increased penalties that keep students from learning, such as suspensions and expulsions, according to an October 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office. The report called on the U.S. Department of Education to provide resources to help schools design fairer dress codes.

Some see strict dress codes in public schools as traces of racist attempts to control the appearance of black people, dating back to slavery. In the eighteenth century, South Carolina’s “Negro Act” made it illegal for black people to dress “beyond their fitness.” Long after slavery was abolished, Black Americans continued to be stigmatized for not adopting grooming habits that matched white, European beauty norms and standards.

Braids and other hairstyles have cultural significance for many African Americans. They served as methods of communication in African societies, including to identify tribal affiliations or marriage status, and as clues to safety and freedom for those captured and enslaved, historians say. But many Black Americans have felt pressure to straighten curly hair or keep it short.

Whether in professional workplaces, social clubs, or schools, research has shown that such beauty and grooming standards have caused physical, psychological, and economic harm to Black people and other people of color.

Dress codes are based on regulations that date back decades, which explains why they are often complex, said Courtney Mauldin, a professor at Syracuse University’s School of Education.

“Schools are not designed with black children in mind,” she said. “Our forefathers of education were all white men who set the tone for what schools would be… and what the purposes of education are – one of which is conformity. That’s one of the most important ideas that was actually introduced in the 19th century.”

In some cases, students and advocates have successfully withdrawn.

In 2017, then 15-year-old black twins, Deanna and Mya Cook, were punished for wearing box braids with extensions at their charter school in Malden, Massachusetts. The sisters were told that their hair did not meet the school’s dress code. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed a complaint, and the attorney general said the school’s policy against hair extensions and other hairstyles appeared to violate racial discrimination laws.

“You don’t expect to have any problems with your hair,” says Mya Cook, now 22 and a recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “But we see it happening. Administrators can take revenge on students and use that as a form of control and oppression. And because there is no policy, they can get away with it.”

According to the GAO report, schools with higher percentages of black and Hispanic students are more likely to enforce strict dress codes, and schools in the South are twice as likely to enforce strict dress codes as those in the Northeast. Across the subregion, which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, 71% of public schools have strict dress codes — the highest in the nation, the report said.

School districts have argued that strict dress codes increase academic performance, encourage discipline and good hygiene, and help limit distractions.

At Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, where Darryl George is a junior, Superintendent Greg Poole has likened the district’s grooming policies to military practices. In a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle last month, Poole said service members “realize that being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity, and being part of something bigger than yourself.”

George has been serving an in-school suspension or time in an off-site disciplinary program since late August. His family was denied a religious exemption and argued that his locs have cultural significance.

George’s family has also filed a formal complaint with the Texas Education Agency and filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with the school district. The lawsuits allege that the state and county have failed to enforce the CROWN Act, which bans hair discrimination based on race and went into effect in Texas in September.

Asking students to change the way they wear their hair for the sake of uniformity is indicative of racism, said U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat who supports the CROWN Act.

“Facing this unnecessary discrimination, which has nothing to do with your ability to learn, nothing to do with your ability to sit in a classroom, nothing to do with your ability to thrive academically, is wrong,” she said. .

In 2020, the same high school told a Black male student he had to cut his dreadlocks to return to school or participate in graduation. In recent years, several other high schools in Texas have told black students that their hair violated dress code policies. The ACLU has filed lawsuits in a number of cases, including against the Magnolia Independent School District, which ultimately led to hair restrictions being removed from the dress code.

In 2020, the ACLU of Texas identified 477 school districts with hair length rules for boys only. Since then, half have removed the restrictions from their policies, an ACLU report shows. It calls for fairer dress codes, noting that black students are more likely to face disciplinary action.

The hair length rules that apply to boys in Texas schools also unfairly target transgender and nonbinary students, said Chloe Kempf, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas.

The trial will be held Thursday in state court in Anahuac, Texas, to decide whether George’s high school is violating the CROWN Act with a dress code that limits the length of boys’ hair. The decision is expected to set a precedent in a state where several districts have similar policies.

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