Saturday, November 24, 2007

Dreading Southern Maryland

A private school in Waldorf, Maryland (Charles County -- southeast of D.C.) has suspended a three-year old boy for wearing dreadlocks. The family is suing, alleging racial discrimination. Hairstyles are a surprisingly robust area of anti-discrimination studies, but I'm not really interested in the legal aspects of the case right now. While I think that the law should presumptively cover expressive elements of one's racial identity (a presumption that can be overruled, obviously), my understanding is that the current precedent isn't there yet. Unfortunate, but so it goes.

Rather, what I want to focus on is the school's dress regulation which the boy was cited as violating. It prohibits boys from wearing "extreme faddish hairstyles, including the use of rubber bands or the 'twisting' of hair." This is rather puzzling -- not because it's an unreasonable rule, but because I do not know how dreadlocks can accurately be labeled either "extreme" or "faddish." Dreadlocks have a long and distinguished history as a hairstyle -- it being particularly amenable to the type of kinky hair Black men and women tend to possess. They are neither new, nor strange, nor exotic, nor fleeting. They might, however, seem that way to a White schoolmaster, unaccustomed to how Black people's hair actually behaves (let alone the history of Black hairstyling). Like most other hair regimes, I've seen dreadlocks look very stylish and professional, and I've seen them look ugly and sloppy. But there is nothing intrinsic to them that makes it a worthwhile goal to ban them.

And that's what annoys me about cases like this. Without fail, the school responds to the controversy merely by blithely asserting how it has a "right" to establish a dress code. Certainly, it does, but that says nothing about whether this particular code (or application thereof) is intelligent. This is a dumb requirement. It is silly to ban three-year old kids from wearing dreadlocks, anymore than banning them from wearing pony tails. It's ridiculous to assert that dreads are "extreme" or "faddish". It's mean-spirited to kick a three-year old out of class for having the wrong hair. Charles County's Black population has exploded in recent years, and not all the local residents are pleased about it. When a school digs in and tries to defend a foolish rule that overwhelmingly affects its Black students, I start to wonder whether there isn't some latent hostility as well.

10 comments:

Robin Datta said...

I had the impression that dreadlocks are Yiddish, not faddish.

Perhaps the school is in keeping with the new American Fascism.

David Schraub said...

I think you're confusing dreadlocks with sidecurls. ;-)

Tony said...

Dreads are usually worn by Rastafarians. If you are not a Rastafarian, it would seem reasonable to assume that your hairstyle is faddish. If you are a Rastafarian, why are you enrolled in a Christian school?

Anonymous said...

Dreadlocks are such a current fad... in the style of the late Bo Derek (who was a Perfect 10, they used to tell me).

Tony you are such a goof!

PG said...

If you are a Rastafarian, why are you enrolled in a Christian school?

Um, wow. If the school is willing to enroll non-Christians, why do you care? I'm not a Christian, and I went to an Episcopalian private school from nursery through 5th grade. I expect this kid's parents, like mine, just want their children to get the best education possible, and whether the school is Christian or not matters less than the quality of the education.

I'm very grateful in retrospect that my school did not prohibit wearing bindis as "extreme faddish" makeup. Perhaps because they were Episcopalian, they took a tolerant attitude toward students' variety of religions and cultures.

Anonymous said...

Actually Tony, the locks hairstyle has a cultural history dating as far back as ancient dynastic Egypt, well before the 1930s inception of the Rastafari movement. You set up a false dilemma by failing to account for all the non-Rastafarians that have and continue to wear their hair like that in a genuine way (pot smoking, Marley loving, White college students aside).

Anonymous said...

Hmm. Given that white folks brought us the mullet, I think they've indefinitely lost their hair-judgment principles.

Anonymous said...

Privileges! Privileges! Damn. sorry.

Anonymous said...

While dreadlocks are often associated with Rastafarianism, they are not exclusive to Rastas. In fact, the assistant pastor at my church as locs, and has had them for many years. There are many tens of thousands of African Americans wearing locs from all walks of life. Its not a new fad.

Anonymous said...

I live in Charles County and the headmaster at the school is an African American female. So you can forget the presumptions that this is racially driven. It is a Christian school, not an uptight snooty white private school. The school's rules were in effect when the family enrolled the child and they knew they were in violation-they wanted to push the envelope!