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.
I come from a country with school uniforms and I hated it.
Felt more like a way to control us and/or it was all about the schoool’s image.
Our hair had to follow certain rules, short, no colour, no gel.
School uniforms are a related, but different, issue. School dress codes in the U.S. do allow freedom to wear some of what you want, but many of the restrictions are arbitrary “no hats” or antiquated “skirts must be below the knee.” And many of the dress codes are intentionally designed to favor things like white people’s hair without caring about the legitimate physical issues black people might have with those hair codes. Many are also designed to shame girls.
Yeah we had them in Australia and they fucking suck so bad, not to mention it’s more expensive buying the school clothes you can only ever really wear at school.
Also had rules around hair, makeup, etc. but I didn’t really run into them too much.