The family of a Black high school student in Texas on Saturday filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state’s governor and attorney general over his ongoing suspension by his school district for his hairstyle.
Darryl George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since Aug. 31 at the Houston-area school. School officials say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.
George’s mother, Darresha George, and the family’s attorney deny the teenager’s hairstyle violates the dress code, saying his hair is neatly tied in twisted dreadlocks on top of his head.
What is an “in-school suspension?”
Like you sit in a corner staring at the wall from 8-3?
Basically. You can do homework or other busy work, but you can’t interact with peers or really do anything else.
* and they will give you busy work - write an essay, do some math, etc.
TIL thanks. Sounds grim.
The American schooling system is basically formulated to prep you for a 9-5 job by simulating miserable working conditions, general misery, and the ever present threat of violence in some form or fashion.
Not every state. This is Texas. I’m in California and my kid went to school with shoulder length hair that was half blue. My relatives in Texas kept asking what the school was doing about it. There’s nothing on the books about hair and the principal said it looked cool. Hair has always been a control issue in bible thumping communities, which I thankfully am no longer around.
i’ve never really understood why they get so uptight about hair color and dress codes in general. is it just to maintain uniformity and control because they’re scared of change?
i’m not that stylish and personally don’t like the look of hair that’s dyed a color that doesn’t “show up naturally” (for lack of a better term), but it’s just my own personal taste and i think it’s important people are able to look and dress how they want. i also don’t like sports jerseys, but wouldn’t go around trying to ban those.
but it seems like these people get offended when they see people dress a way they don’t like, and their gut reaction is to make rules forbidding it. why? it seems like a lot of work that ultimately makes everyone miserable, when it’s much less effort to just accept that people are different and move on.
When I was growing up 30ish years ago, they implemented uniforms and said that it was to prevent bullying based on the clothes people wear. However, they failed to take into account the cost for struggling parents to maintain 2 sets of clothes. The policy got reversed after a few years.
This is a genuine question: have you ever seen someone dressed in a way that you found inappropriate for an occasion? Or if not, can you imagine a scenario where that exists? Wearing white at a wedding, wearing bright colors at a funeral, etc? If so, you understand what these people feel. They take it to a very dumb place, but that’s where the offence comes from. Luckily it seems to be dying in many ways - and having a less than fun rebirth in others
i haven’t seen one first hand but i can imagine such a scenario. this was a very good explanation, thank you.
what you said got me thinking a bit more about this and it’s made me wonder how much of this might be related to all the etiquette rules that people used to live by. i remember some of my older relatives getting visibly bothered if i held a fork the wrong way or put my elbows on the table, because it went against what they had drilled into their heads in classes when they were younger.
the ways i’ve heard the classes described make them sound like the teachers were very strict and were basically teaching children to be offended at behaviors that were “deviating from the norm” (for lack of a better term). i don’t know any people my age who attended etiquette classes, but my understanding is that it used to be much more common for older people.
i can’t help but wonder if the decreased cultural importance of etiquette is part of the reason people are more tolerant of different appearances. in some sense, they weren’t “taught” to be offended.
Seems formulates to prepare you for jail…
Ding We got a winner!
Lol what? That seems like a bit of a stretch.
The US are fucked up
Yeah. In my experience you’re still getting all of your classwork and you’re getting instruction. But you’re isolated from your peers.
In this instance especially it’s fucking stupid. But in theory his education is not being completely interrupted by this bullshit
I know a lot of people were shitting on it under my comment, but honestly it seemed a better deterrent than actual suspension. Out of school you could just fuck off and do whatever. Sitting on a corner was boring as shit and was something to avoid.
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to impact an individuals education. The kind of kids who get in trouble are not going to be set on the straight and narrow by being left at home alone all day.