this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
594 points (98.8% liked)

News

23376 readers
1999 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A judge ordered Wednesday that a trial be held next month to determine whether a Black high school student in Texas can continue being punished by his district for refusing to change a hairstyle he and his family say is protected by a new state law.

Darryl George, 18, has not been in his regular classroom in Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu since Aug. 31. Instead, he has either been serving in-school suspension or spending time in an off-site disciplinary program.

His Houston-area school district, Barbers Hill, has said George’s long hair, which he wears in neatly tied and twisted locs on top of his head, violates a district dress code that limits hair length for boys. The district has said other students with locs comply with the length policy.

...

In the ad, Poole defended his district’s policy and wrote that districts with a traditional dress code are safer and had higher academic performance and that “being an American requires conformity.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Black hair often tends to be more coarse, dry, and curly than others' hair. A lot of black hairstyles are meant not only as source of self expression, but also to promote moisture retention, scalp health, and cleanliness since frequent washing can easily strip oil from the hair and damage it. It also helps protect the long but brittle hair against breakage.

Unfortunately, there's a long history of black hair styles being seen as "messy" and "unprofessional" in the US, owing to our colonial past. Many people don't really understand black hair care and believe the same rules apply to all kinds of hair, requiring or at least implying that hair should be relaxed/straight in a professional setting and anything else looks "nappy", unkempt, or "ghetto".

This is the feeling we get when seeing the rule about length when hair is "let down", the idea that, should George not wear this particular style, his hair would hang down to his shoulders. That's just not how that kind of hair works, so why is that kind of measurement being applied? "Length" is not deterministic for that kind of hair (ever seen someone before and after they pick their hair?) so the rule seems rather arbitrary. Is this rule applied equally to students with looser curly hair that naturally sits above their hairline when, if straight, it would drop over their eyes? How about people who wear a fro that can be pulled down to their shoulders? His hair is not to his shirt collar or over his ears, nor could it easily become so during the school day, so what exactly is the problem with it? It feels like this rule has been arbitrarily enforced in this case not because of the length of his hair, but because of the particular style of it. Intentional or not, it smacks of some of those old (but still prevalent) conceptions about certain traditionally black hairstyles.