For as long as schools have policed 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 this week is set to determine whether high school administrators can continue punishing a Black teenager for refusing to cut his hair. The 18-year-old student, Darryl George, who wears his hair in locs tied atop his head, has been kept out of his classroom since the start of the school year.
To school administrators, strict dress codes can be tools for promoting uniformity and discipline. But advocates say the codes disproportionately affect students of color and the punishments disrupt learning. Under pressure, many schools in Texas have removed boys-only hair length rules, while hundreds of districts maintain hair restrictions written into their dress codes.
Schools that enforce strict dress codes have higher rates of punishment that take students away 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 more equitable dress codes.
That’s the thing, though. Dress codes aren’t about uniforms but about uniformity and punishment. It’s about everything else - what haircuts you can have, how much makeup you can put on, whether or not you can use hair gel, etc. It’s an excuse to punish people for not being white enough, or for being women, etc.
It’s justification for stomping out anything outside of the dominant culture (or what these racists believe the dominant culture should be).
A uniform is one thing, but so many of these dress codes come down to “we don’t like black people having different hair” or “we want to shame high school girls into wearing long skirts because we believe that men can’t control themselves and the boys and teachers both will be so distracted and horny that they won’t be able to learn/teach.”
This stuff always reminds me of those ads for skin bleaching kits from around the 60s that had taglines like “Be white. Be loved.”