Black Student Suspended Over Dreadlocks Removed and Transferred to a Disciplinary Program – Mother Jones

Michael Wyke/AP

A Texas highschool that suspended a Black pupil for greater than a month over the size of his dreadlocks is eradicating the scholar and transferring him to an alternate disciplinary program. Beginning yesterday, Darryl George, an 18-year-old junior at Barbers Hill Excessive College in Mont Belvieu, east of Houston, will report back to EPIC till November 29.

“Your little one has engaged in persistent or repeated disciplinary infractions that violate the district’s beforehand communicated requirements of pupil conduct,” college officers wrote to George’s household in a letter obtained by the New York Occasions.

Barbers Hill Excessive College’s determination to ship George to the choice program extends a sample of disciplinary actions taken in opposition to Black college students over their hairstyles. As my colleague nia t. evans and I wrote in a bit simply final week, George’s suspension on August 31 got here simply in the future earlier than Texas’s CROWN Act, a regulation that prohibits race-based hair discrimination, was slated to enter impact. In 2020, the college got here below fireplace for equally suspending one other Black pupil, DeAndre Arnold, over his dreadlocks, ordering him to chop them to attend commencement. 

“The racism is being proven,” mentioned Candice Matthews, a civil rights advocate and spokesperson to the George household, after Barber Hills Excessive College instructed George he was being transferred. Following his suspension in August, George’s dad and mom filed a lawsuit in opposition to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for failure to implement the CROWN Act. However the concern displays a far wider and systemic racism:

The episodes at Barbers Hills Excessive replicate a longstanding concern in america, notably in colleges the place gown codes can discriminate in opposition to college students. You noticed it within the video of a New Jersey highschool wrestler compelled to chop his locs after a referee claimed that preserving them would forfeit the match. When a North Carolina constitution college demanded {that a} younger Indigenous boy lower his hair earlier than returning to class after spring break. Such incidents, broadly condemned as racist, have sparked legal guidelines just like the CROWN Act across the nation. Regardless of these protections, college directors nonetheless implement insurance policies that focus on non-white college students. 

 We spoke with Dr. Bettina Love, a professor of schooling at Columbia College and creator of Punished for Dreaming: How College Reform Harms Black Kids and How We Heal, to debate George’s case and the hurt these discriminatory insurance policies have on college students of colour.

“It’s vital to notice this story isn’t nearly hair. It’s about anti-Blackness,” Love instructed Mom Jones. “Black folks’s hair is such an vital image of our id. It’s about who we’re and the way we categorical ourselves…Our hair is likely one of the largest reflections of our blackness and so it’s all the time going to be below assault.”