Schools ban afros and corn rows
Hugh Freaking Dillon
Posts: 14,010
"Why are you so sad?" a TV reporter asked the little girl with a bright pink bow in her hair.
"Because they didn't like my dreads," she sobbed, wiping her tears. "I think that they should let me have my dreads."
With those words, second-grader Tiana Parker of Tulsa, Okla., found herself, at age 7, at the centre of decades of debate over standards of black beauty, cultural pride and freedom of expression.
It was no isolated incident at the predominantly black Deborah Brown Community School, which in the face of outrage in late August apologized and rescinded language banning dreadlocks, Afros, mohawks and other "faddish" hairstyles it had called unacceptable and potential health hazards.
A few weeks earlier, another charter school, the Horizon Science Academy in Lorain, Ohio, sent a draft policy home to parents that proposed a ban on "Afro-puffs and small twisted braids." It, too, quickly apologized and withdrew the wording.
But at historically black Hampton University in Hampton, Va., the dean of the business school has defended and left in place a 12-year-old prohibition on dreadlocks and cornrows for male students in a leadership seminar for MBA candidates, saying the look is not businesslike.
Tiana's father, barber student Terrance Parker, said he and his wife chose not to change her style and moved the straight-A student to a different public school, where she now happily sings songs about her hair with friends.
"I think it stills hurts her. But the way I teach my kids is regardless of what people say, you be yourself and you be happy with who you are and how God made you," he said.
Tiana added: "I like my new school better." As for the thousands of emails and phone calls of support the family has received from around the world, she said she feels "cared about."
Deborah Brown, the school's founder, did not return a call from The Associated Press. Jayson Bendik, dean of students at Horizon in Lorain, said in an email that "our word choice was a mistake."
In New York City, the dress code at 16-year-old Dante de Blasio's large public high school in Brooklyn includes no such hair restrictions. Good thing for Dante, whose large Afro is hard to miss at campaign stops and in a TV spot for his father, Bill de Blasio, who is running for mayor.
There is no central clearinghouse for local school board policies on hairstyles, or surveys indicating whether such rules are widespread. Regardless, mothers of colour and black beauty experts consider the controversies business as usual.
"Our girls are always getting messages that tell them that they are not good enough, that they don't look pretty enough, that their skin isn't light enough, that their hair isn't long enough, that their hair isn't blond enough," said Beverly Bond of the New York-based esteem-building group Black Girls Rock.
"The public banning of our hair or anything about us that looks like we look, it feels like it's such a step backward."
Bond founded the organization in response to an episode in 2007 when radio host Don Imus called members of the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." He later apologized.
In Chicago, Leila Noelliste has been blogging about natural hair at Blackgirllonghair.com for about five years. She has followed the school cases closely. The 28-year-old mother with a natural hairstyle and two daughters who also wear their hair that way said it is a touchy issue among African-Americans and others.
"This is the way the hair grows out of my head, yet it's even shocking in some black communities, because we've kind of been told culturally that to be acceptable and to make other people kind of comfortable with the way that we look, we should straighten our hair, whether through heat or chemicals," she said. "So whether we're in non-black communities or black communities, with our natural hair, we stand out. It evokes a lot of reaction."
Particularly painful, said Noelliste and others, is the notion that natural styles are not hygienic.
"Historically natural hair has been viewed as dirty, unclean, unkempt, messy," she said. "An older black generation, there's this idea of African-American exceptionalism, that the way for us to get ahead is to work twice as hard as any white person and to prove that if we just work hard and we look presentable we'll get ahead, and that's very entrenched. My generation, we're saying that that's not fair. We should be able to show up as we are and based on our individual merit and effort be judged on that."
Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said legal rulings on hair and other issues pertaining to school dress codes have been fairly clear.
"For decades now, Supreme Court precedent has reaffirmed that clothing, including hairstyle, is part of a student's speech, and if you're going to interfere with that, then the school district has to make some findings beforehand demonstrating that there is an immediate threat to the academic environment," he said. "That wasn't the case here and in most dress-code cases."
Denene Millner in Atlanta created a blog, Mybrownbaby.com, for other African-American moms and also followed the school hair controversies. She went natural nearly 14 years ago for the sake of her daughters, now 11 and 14.
"I didn't want them to grow up with the same idea that I had when I was little, that there was something wrong with the way that my hair grew out of my head," said Millner, 45. "It's something that we've grappled with for a very, very long time. There's a whole lot of assumptions made about you that may not necessarily be true: that you're political, that you're Afro-centric, that you might be vegetarian, that you're kind of a hipster."
She said watching Tiana sob on camera "about these grown-ups, black folks, who are supposed to not just educate her but show her how to love herself, it tore my heart to shreds."
"Because they didn't like my dreads," she sobbed, wiping her tears. "I think that they should let me have my dreads."
With those words, second-grader Tiana Parker of Tulsa, Okla., found herself, at age 7, at the centre of decades of debate over standards of black beauty, cultural pride and freedom of expression.
It was no isolated incident at the predominantly black Deborah Brown Community School, which in the face of outrage in late August apologized and rescinded language banning dreadlocks, Afros, mohawks and other "faddish" hairstyles it had called unacceptable and potential health hazards.
A few weeks earlier, another charter school, the Horizon Science Academy in Lorain, Ohio, sent a draft policy home to parents that proposed a ban on "Afro-puffs and small twisted braids." It, too, quickly apologized and withdrew the wording.
But at historically black Hampton University in Hampton, Va., the dean of the business school has defended and left in place a 12-year-old prohibition on dreadlocks and cornrows for male students in a leadership seminar for MBA candidates, saying the look is not businesslike.
Tiana's father, barber student Terrance Parker, said he and his wife chose not to change her style and moved the straight-A student to a different public school, where she now happily sings songs about her hair with friends.
"I think it stills hurts her. But the way I teach my kids is regardless of what people say, you be yourself and you be happy with who you are and how God made you," he said.
Tiana added: "I like my new school better." As for the thousands of emails and phone calls of support the family has received from around the world, she said she feels "cared about."
Deborah Brown, the school's founder, did not return a call from The Associated Press. Jayson Bendik, dean of students at Horizon in Lorain, said in an email that "our word choice was a mistake."
In New York City, the dress code at 16-year-old Dante de Blasio's large public high school in Brooklyn includes no such hair restrictions. Good thing for Dante, whose large Afro is hard to miss at campaign stops and in a TV spot for his father, Bill de Blasio, who is running for mayor.
There is no central clearinghouse for local school board policies on hairstyles, or surveys indicating whether such rules are widespread. Regardless, mothers of colour and black beauty experts consider the controversies business as usual.
"Our girls are always getting messages that tell them that they are not good enough, that they don't look pretty enough, that their skin isn't light enough, that their hair isn't long enough, that their hair isn't blond enough," said Beverly Bond of the New York-based esteem-building group Black Girls Rock.
"The public banning of our hair or anything about us that looks like we look, it feels like it's such a step backward."
Bond founded the organization in response to an episode in 2007 when radio host Don Imus called members of the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." He later apologized.
In Chicago, Leila Noelliste has been blogging about natural hair at Blackgirllonghair.com for about five years. She has followed the school cases closely. The 28-year-old mother with a natural hairstyle and two daughters who also wear their hair that way said it is a touchy issue among African-Americans and others.
"This is the way the hair grows out of my head, yet it's even shocking in some black communities, because we've kind of been told culturally that to be acceptable and to make other people kind of comfortable with the way that we look, we should straighten our hair, whether through heat or chemicals," she said. "So whether we're in non-black communities or black communities, with our natural hair, we stand out. It evokes a lot of reaction."
Particularly painful, said Noelliste and others, is the notion that natural styles are not hygienic.
"Historically natural hair has been viewed as dirty, unclean, unkempt, messy," she said. "An older black generation, there's this idea of African-American exceptionalism, that the way for us to get ahead is to work twice as hard as any white person and to prove that if we just work hard and we look presentable we'll get ahead, and that's very entrenched. My generation, we're saying that that's not fair. We should be able to show up as we are and based on our individual merit and effort be judged on that."
Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said legal rulings on hair and other issues pertaining to school dress codes have been fairly clear.
"For decades now, Supreme Court precedent has reaffirmed that clothing, including hairstyle, is part of a student's speech, and if you're going to interfere with that, then the school district has to make some findings beforehand demonstrating that there is an immediate threat to the academic environment," he said. "That wasn't the case here and in most dress-code cases."
Denene Millner in Atlanta created a blog, Mybrownbaby.com, for other African-American moms and also followed the school hair controversies. She went natural nearly 14 years ago for the sake of her daughters, now 11 and 14.
"I didn't want them to grow up with the same idea that I had when I was little, that there was something wrong with the way that my hair grew out of my head," said Millner, 45. "It's something that we've grappled with for a very, very long time. There's a whole lot of assumptions made about you that may not necessarily be true: that you're political, that you're Afro-centric, that you might be vegetarian, that you're kind of a hipster."
She said watching Tiana sob on camera "about these grown-ups, black folks, who are supposed to not just educate her but show her how to love herself, it tore my heart to shreds."
Gimli 1993
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
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Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
And corn-rows? How many guys (and women) got off to Bo Derek in her slo-mo beach-run? I bet those beads smacking against her head must've hurt though.
I have no problem with hair-expression, nor with many and most-expression. I can't imagine it'd be a distraction in the learning environment at that young age, but who knows.
(also, the assumptions mentioned - might be a vegetarian or a hipster? Struck me as strange and a bit amusing)
One last point about hair and something I thought about based on the quotes in the article vs what I see in the entertainment industry and beyond. How are some women like Beyonce or Halle Berry or Jennifer Hudson etc given the OK for their hairness? It seems like every other day there's some headline indicating the color or length or style of Beyonce's fucking HAIR.
Personally I don't give a shit, but I don't get how these women are celebrated on how they enhance their looks, but others are scolded for doing the same.
It just doesn't reconcile.
98 CAA
00 Virginia Beach;Camden I; Jones Beach III
05 Borgata Night I; Wachovia Center
06 Letterman Show; Webcast (guy in blue shirt), Camden I; DC
08 Camden I; Camden II; DC
09 Phillie III
10 MSG II
13 Wrigley Field
16 Phillie II
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/10/s ... ng-policy/
The Tulsa, OK charter school that sent home 7-year-old Tiana Parker last week for having the wrong hairstyle has adopted a more inclusive dress code in the wake of the incident. According to Tulsa’s Channel 6 News, officials at the Deborah Brown Community School voted to change the code on Monday night after receiving negative publicity for its decision to send the little girl home.
The previous policy banned “faddish” hairstyles, listing afros and dreadlocks as unacceptable. Now the school has broadened guidelines, but still says hairstyles that violate “hygiene” standards will still be considered inappropriate for school. The policy now reads:
“Each student and the parents/guardians of the student are responsible for the personal hygiene of the student. The Administration reserves the right to contact the parents/guardians regarding any personal hygiene issues that it believes causes a risk to the health, safety and welfare of the student, his or her classmates, and faculty or staff or detracts from the educational environment.”
Tiana Parker’s parents withdrew their daughter from the school after the child came home crying last week, saying that school officials told her that her new braids, accented with a bright red bow, were inappropriate for school and “distracting.”
The hairstyle, said Deborah Brown Community School officials to KOKI, “could distract from the respectful and serious atmosphere [the school] strives for.”
Rather than fight the school’s decision, Tiana’s parents have enrolled her in a new school. Deborah Brown is sponsored by Langston University and university president Kent Smith said in a statement, “The action taken today by the board of the Deborah Brown Charter School to amend the policy which resulted in the unfortunate disciplining of a young lady for the style of her hair is commendable. I appreciate the quick action. The amended policy reflects the respect we have at Langston University for our students and their individuality.”
Watch video about this story, embedded below via NewsOn6.com:
98 CAA
00 Virginia Beach;Camden I; Jones Beach III
05 Borgata Night I; Wachovia Center
06 Letterman Show; Webcast (guy in blue shirt), Camden I; DC
08 Camden I; Camden II; DC
09 Phillie III
10 MSG II
13 Wrigley Field
16 Phillie II
i hope like hell those family & their kids have the chance to switch schools & or wear their fucking hair any way they wish. i bet there are kids there w/ green, pink & blue hair.
here's the deal with what i know about afros in school. my friend in jr. high & high school wore a afro. i bought my grass off of him @ $3 a joint. literally he stashed pot in his hair. he would also stash hollowed pens filled with a joint in them or cut up grass. it was golden.
these schools wouldn't like my hair. nearly dreads but more corkscrew curls & when i don't comb it out i get dreads. my face is nearly covered, bangs on my chin. our hair is part of who we are.
these schools should be closed down until further notice & after a investigation
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
http://www.examiner.com/article/school- ... ns-opposed
In Little Rock, Arkansas, the school district has implemented a new dress that applies to teachers, and included in the is the requirement they wear underwear. And, believe it or not, the teachers unions are against it. It will also require female teachers to wear bras.
there were a handfulla teachers when i was in school that i wished never wore underwear or bras. some damn fine meat those gals were holding. i had crushes on all of them & they knew it & a time or two the flirting was quite warm & thick. wow! they were spectacular :twisted: it all started in 2nd grade as my catholic teacher was not required to wear the nun outfit but rather wore nice open blouses & had the greatest lace bras a 2nd grade chadwick could ever look down into her blouse at as i was at her desk 15 times a day asking for help
the best was yet to come
no i did not go through my entire schooling years in a catholic setting, just one & a half years of it.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
"Let's check Idaho."
if they are wearing a short skirt, I can see it. but doesn't making someone wear a specific type of undergarment under any type of clothing a bit controlling?
I could see if it was worded in such a way as to say "if naughy bits may be visible, undergarments will be required dress", but if the person is wearing dress pants or even jeans? that's a bit silly.
always bras. I don't want to see some chicks nipples dragging on the floor.
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Get a haircut, hippi!
wow
now that's short
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
To me, hair style, color, etc. is so inconsequential at that age - any age really unless as an adult you're going into an industry that requires a more professional look.
When I was 14-ish, my mom dragged me to a hairdresser to cut my long hair because she thought it was contributing to my "acting out". OK, mom, it's the hair...has NOTHING to do with the fact that you and my dad are divorcing.
Yeesh.
(by the way, the lady at the salon loved my hair and refused to cut it