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.
Fuck dress code mostly, but honestly I’d have been fine with school uniforms if they were free, comfortable, not hideous or obviously designed by an old pedo with a uniform fetish, have pockets and no functionality affecting design flaws, and we got enough to wear while others were in laundry. Or if you could exchange for a clean one at school, like jobs with uniform service.
Forcing hair style though is a fuck that. In real life there are like 2 situations that can justify hairstyle mandates and even then only in a very limited manner, food handling jobs the hair should fit in a hairnet and potentially beard net, and trades and other labour jobs that need respirators which require full shave for definitive functionality and short ish hair with machinery that can pull your hair or beard in and kill you. I had a very far back hair line from a young age and every hair style looks like shit on me, so I wouldn’t care for myself generally as maintaining it is a meritless endeavour that I wish could be automated. Now if they covered my hair cut or had a decent on call barber every now and then students could visit for a basic haircut if they didn’t already have a hairstyle they maintain themselves, that would have been sick. Go to school, get a hair cut and uniform exchange in the free block, grab a bowl noodle from locker and hot water from caf or the student advice lounge. Maybe I wouldn’t have hated 90% of school and just 70 ish instead.
discipline is a bullshit virtue to promote. innate subjection to authority is not something to foster in children
We should difference between racism and victimizing here. I don’t know which of these two is.
If the dress code apply for white and black kids I believe it’s just victimizing and shaming racism.
If the dress code apply only for black or white kids then definetly it’s racism.
You can have policies that equally apply to all people that are still racist. Same with sexist. If, for example, the dress code requires men to have a short list of approved haircuts, and all of them are styles that only work with a specific type of white hair, the policy is racist.
On the sexism side, if the policy is that everyone must wear an exact uniform, but that uniform doesn’t fit wide hips or large chests, the policy is sexist.
It doesn’t have to apply only for one group to be racism. Redlining was a practice that was technically about areas, not people, and there could be white people within those areas, but it’s still racism. If the effects of a policy land disproportionately on one group or affect one group differently, like the shaving policy AllonzeeLV mentioned, where a frequency of shaving harms one group more than another, holding the group that will be harmed to a policy that harms them is racist.
Pretty accurate, if someone it’s discriminated for any racial characteristic not just the skin color I believe it’s racism too.
Anyway dress codes are dress codes it doesn’t matter which race you are if there is a dress code to follow you should follow it.
Maybe we should talk about dresscodeism.
This dresscodeism is about regulating hairstyle and not clothing in this instance.
Oh then hairstylism hard to determine it, curly hair people can’t hair style as straight hair people and viceversa, definetly it could be a problem but at the same time I would be more concerned about the education of the kids than their hair style tbh. What about if all the kids get their head shaved and problem solved?
I wish my k-12 experience had a dress code. Nothing crazy. No hair requirement nonsense. Just everyone, every gender, wears the same polo/tshirt, and the same pants. Makeup is fine, whatever. 1) cost effective. 2) no thinking in the morning. I don’t think discipline has anything to do with it, and that shouldn’t be the focus.
Me, too. I remember getting bullied for my clothes and lack of style in elementary school. It would’ve been nice to take that out of the equation. Definitely wouldn’t have wanted hair to be part of the rules, though.
funny its only the deep south where black kids are given this kind of treatment.
might be racist? these kids are being punished for not looking white enough, and the schools admins get to snicker in their racism.
Racist? No, some of their best servants are black.
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.
we never had hair restrictions … that I bumped up against (even with wild colours) … and getting detention for non sanctioned clothing was a badge of honor. I basically spent my entire final year in a trench coat, and maybe Columbine helped me out a little bit there, but honestly the whole 90’s was basically a class on how to subvert the school dress code for me and my classmates.
but I guess if you lack imagination it could be a bit stifling not being able to get your personality off the rack.
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.
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how else would discriminate against “people” (hint: they don’t see dark skinned people as people)
Ooh, ooh, how about complaining about their accent and choice of slang! No way that’s going to be racist wink wink nudge nudge
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Fools like this want everyone to be invisible, anonymous, and unimportant, being non-white is already a splinter in their eye unless you prove you’re extraordinary
I think some codes are reasonable, mainly those that promote hygiene, which kids are notoriously bad at.
There is no helping children’s hygiene except through education, rules won’t do shit
Rules are an enforcement method instilling education of the consequences of not following the rules.
can you give me some examples of that? I’ve never seen a policy that your clothes had to be clean but maybe that’s because I never went to look for that sort of thing
because probably it was not bad enough for them to enforce it. But there is always that one kid…
It’s not school rule. It’s parenting rule to provide your kid with clean clothes as much as you can, or at least, it should be.
I’ve never heard of it and didn’t realize it was necessary. dark if true
Did your parents never tell you to keep your clothes clean for school? That’s just normal parenting, how’s that dark?
it’s dark to think that some kids go to school wearing dirty clothes and so there’s a policy against it
holy shit lemmy is stupid
Well it was not clear what you were referring to. The comment you replied was talking about the rules, not the kids wearing dirty clothes.
Since when Lemmy got full of pretentious twats that label everyone stupid for having a misunderstanding that is clearly their fault?
dark if true
why?
The article and comments seem to be primarily focused on the racist aspects of dress codes. I just wanted to chime in and point out they are also very transphobic and queerphobic and are very often used as a way of punishing queer people. So multiple axes of oppression involved with dress codes.
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Pants. Pants are gender neutral.
That’s a brave assumption in about 1/4 of the US.
so that students from poorer families don’t feel othered by rich kids that can afford all of the latest and greatest brands
and then the rich kid has the better phone, the cool shoes and I could go on. On top often there are different quality levels of clothes that cost different amounts of money and you can see that even if the color is the same and then you have the poorest kid that has to wear the used uniform. On top the rich kid has ten of them, so if they get dirty there is always a fresh one, the kids who had only two pants were called the “dirt kids” and stumbling and ripping your trousers - they get stitched together because buying new ones isn’t going to happen until next month when Mom gets paid. You suddenly grow a lot - gratulations, now you have to wear pants that are too short for some time.
If bullying because of money vs no money is a problem at your school you will not change that by trying to make everyone look samy at a surface level, because the problem is way deeper and mostly starts with the parents and they do not wear a school uniform.
Also it is not just gender it is also body shape. I was always fatter than others. In a school uniform, skirt or pants, I was looking terrible, the joke was already made, the kids just had to laugh.
They’re not “equalizers”, no matter how many times you post this comment. Richer students will have newer and cleaner uniforms, even if they are exactly the same. Also, just talking about what presents they got for Christmas or where they went on vacation will make it obvious. Uniforms just look nice to parents.
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I’ve been teaching for almost 20 years. Dress codes do not promote discipline whatsoever. Administrators mete out disciplinary measures when students don’t follow the dress code, to be sure, but the only thing the dress code serves to do is promote conformity.
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Have you ever seen the kids shoes. Some have some expensive Air Jordan’s and others might be wearing gold trumps. They know who has the money just by looking down.
In my school uniform included shoes (or at least they had to be of a certain colour). True, you will know who is rich anyway, but the point of the uniform was not to hide who was wealthy, but instead level all clothes and avoid flashing.
Personally, although I think uniforms don’t serve their purpose, and kids are better off wearing whatever they want, I loved that I didn’t have to think about what to wear when going to school.
Sure. If the only things you can wear are school issued and nobody is allowed to bring their lunch, and nobody is allowed to drive.
The vast majority of American dress codes for schools aren’t actual uniforms. You buy whatever you want that fits the dress code. And for white guys it comes down to, “please just wear something” while everyone else has to read a novella length dress code to figure out if their school clothes and hair from last year are still legal.
This has been debunked over and over and over again. Most dress codes don’t limit the kinds of accessories you wear, from bags to watches to jewelry. It doesn’t limit what phone you can have, what car you can drive, what food you can eat. Some have mentioned before that a lot of schools even have multiple tiers of uniforms to get fancier.
This only makes sense if you don’t think about it at all. There will always be bullying, and there will always be bullying against poor kids. The only thing the dress code serves to do is promote conformity.
This only makes sense if you don’t think about it at all.
That’s why so many of our American policies work great.
The title talks about dress codes, but the article focuses almost exclusively on hair.
Yeah, they’re usually part of dress code. Like at my work for instance, it’s part of the dress code to not show any signs of growing facial hair. You can either be clean shaven or have a full beard, but no inbetween.
So if you ever shave you’re stuck with clean shave forever? What’s the cutoff for “full beard”?
For the shaven part, pretty much - you can’t have growing hairs period, so it’s either staying clean shaven or wearing a face mask if you want to grow a beard.
As for the full beard… I never been able to figure it out, but my rather scraggly looking goatee seems to be ok.
Gotta grow that beard on vacation!
Pretty much! Either that or wear a face mask until the beard looks grown out enough 🤷
Or be a knuckle dragging neanderthal like me and push out a full beard over the weekend at 16.
Every single dress code I’ve been under has included hair.
Edit: I should add, some have been more restrictive than others. Back in high school, it was pretty restrictive. No unnatural dyes, stuff like that. I’ve also been under ones that essentially boil down to “just don’t look like a complete mess man”.
My current employee has a dress code that basically boils down to ‘dress professionally, no jeans’ for everyone without any mention of hairstyles. The dress code it replaced about a decade ago had everything including hairstyles defined by gender roles.
Every dress code I have had at schools or employers included hairstyle rules.
Your employer sucks. We wear what we want when we aren’t meeting clients.
Agreed. Mine is like “if you’re being forced into the office for some raisin, wear anything” so I’m free to Opeth+jeans it up.
I’ve never understood why dress codes beyond “Just don’t look like a slob” exist for non client facing jobs.
The same reason why Faux News ladies all have straight blonde hair. Makes some old pervert there happy to see the young ones dressed a certain way.
Why I’ll never have straight blonde hair hahaha
That is the in office dress code, and is pretty lax for a state agency. Honestly it is pretty reasonable, I mean slacks and a polo is perfectly fine.
I also get to work from home and it doesn’t matter what I wear there.
to the school there is no difference.
Even the military has recognized that certain hairstyles are worse on different ethnicities hair, and has subsequently relaxed the standards since I’ve been active.
The military, which is all about uniformity and “discipline”, can see that different cultures have different hair treatments/needs, and not everything has to be “all Caucasian, all the time”.
And yet our K-12 schools can’t seem to do that?! Like wtf?
Oh they know. Discipline doesn’t mean punishment for wrong deeds, it means forceful changes in any behavior, concepts, or ideas that the one executing the discipline dislikes. Disrespecting your “betters” is always a part of this too. I got pulled over once because I passed a police office. He was going under the speed limit so u went the speed limit and passed him. His reason was not showing due respect.
Even better, the principle in Texas pointed to the military as a shining example of uniformity. Not realizing the real reasons behind that. (Easy field hygiene)
Yet again a military larper ruins it for everyone around them.
