How much control should a school have over a child’s appearance? I understand why a school would want their students to wear uniforms. It prevents classicism based on name brand clothing. It also was a response to the wave of robberies against teens for their sneakers and coats in the 90’s. It crosses lines when the schools also want to determine what hairstyles are acceptable and rules for that determination are clearly infused with racist ideologies.

Patrick Richardson said school officials told him that his hair is keeping him from escorting one of the homecoming maids. The 16-year-old is sad that he won’t be in the next Mississippi Vicksburg High School yearbook, pictured escorting his best friend Sa’shia Jones who was chosen junior class maid. Patrick said after paying to have a tux fitting last Thursday, the principal called him to the auditorium and told him that he could not be a homecoming escort because he wears dread locked hair. The junior was told he would have to cut it to be an escort. Richardson is not the only student who has been told that the dreads are not appropriate.

“Another Vicksburg high parent Lynda Jackson said that her son freshman De-Marcus Jackson also wears dreads and was humiliated to find out that his hair would prevent him from escorting the sophomore maid. Vicksburg Schools Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Swinford said there’s no written policy, but there is a practice that bans dreadlocks on the homecoming court.”

This sounds like the schools racist attempt to make the Black students conform to what the school believes is safer White standards. There is no difference between Black students wearing dreads as opposed to White male students having long hair. This brings me to the conclusion that the school is somehow threatened by the dreads and sees them as a display of Afro centricity that obviously makes the school officials uncomfortable. This is the school’s problem not the students. Somehow they believe that a display of Black culture in this form could cause an uproar.

Black students should not be ostracized due to them expressing a cultural difference from other students. It should be no different than the Jewish students wearing the Kippah or the Muslim female students wearing a headscarf. These are an extension of their religion and culture. It is an extension of themselves. Somehow when little Black boys express their culture it is automatically related to being thugs, criminals or dangerous and immediately seen as a threat. As if these are the only descriptions of Black culture.

Thoughts?

Via: The Grio