A Texas school system can't make a Black teen cut his dreadlocks, court rules

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: CNN

US District Court Judge George C. Hanks, Jr. issued a preliminary injunction this week that requires the Barbers Hill Independent School District in Mont Belvieu, Texas, to allow Kaden Bradford to attend school and participate in extracurricular activities without cutting his hair.

Bradford, who is returning to Barbers Hill High School for his junior year, has been wearing his hair in locs since the seventh grade and hasn't cut it since then because the locs would unravel.

"Locs is a natural Black hair formation and I am an African American," he told CNN. "Also to piggyback off of that I've grown up around the Trinidadian culture and locs is a very important part in that culture as well."

He wore his locs up in a hairband to comply with the school's grooming code, which said male students' hair "will not extend, at any time, below the eyebrows, below the ear lobes, or below the top of a T-shirt collar."



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-texas-school-system-can-t-make-a-black-teen-cut-his-dreadlocks-court-rules/ar-BB18c7Ym?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=DELLDHP

[iemitsu]

1. Time for Texas to come out of the Stone Age.

[brush]

2. What is with the obssession with black peoples' hair? Why is there always an attempt...

to regulate it? I don't get it.

[Hiawatha Pete]

6. Exactly, how is someone's hairstyle or length even an issue in this day and age?

Dollars to donuts there was no similar attempt by the school to regulate mullets & rattails

[marble falls]

8. 'Course this guy dropped out in fourth grade.

[Hiawatha Pete]

10. True that!

[rpannier]

17. The school code is in the OP

the school's grooming code, which said male students' hair "will not extend, at any time, below the eyebrows, below the ear lobes, or below the top of a T-shirt collar.
The guy in the pic would have to get a haircut as his hair falls below the top of his collar and below his earlobes

[Hiawatha Pete]

19. Don't see any reference to it in the OP.

Looks like it's in the link.

Regardless I stand corrected.

[The Daily Irishman]

3. BARBERS HILL???

[marble falls]

9. That's nasty cut. They're going to appeal, sort of a hairdo over.

[Archetypist]

4. Seriously, BARBERS HILL?!

Indeed, wow.

[McKim]

5. I Can't Believe This!

I can’t believe this! It was 1979 when I taught second grade a black boy came to school with cornrows and was told: “James, your hair looks like a Girl’s!” I caught that and we read a story called “Cornrows” so the white kids would know about the tradition of Black Hair in Africa and in the US. Why are we still having conflicts over Black Hair? Bo Derek’s hair was in cornrows and beads, come on folks!!!!!

[marble falls]

7. So another school board spends thousands reinforcing what other school boards spent ...

thousands finding out for the last fifty or so years.

Haircuts is not why Johnny can't read with any real comprehension.

[VA_Jill]

11. Texas school boards

showing their idiocy again. Locs have nothing to do with learning. My grandson wears locs. He is also a 4/5 star football recruit (depending on which recruiting service you look at) and an honor student. So I question the validity of "dress codes" made up by a bunch of old white men.

[cstanleytech]

12. "hasn't cut it since then because the locs would unravel." Anyone want to explain that part please?

As for him wearing it to school I think the school had no business telling him that he could not as its only a hairstyle.

[onetexan]

13. Beautiful dreads on the young man. Disgraceful that the school district made him cut them off.

[not fooled]

14. Wanna bet this same school system

claims it doesn't have the resources to enforce mask wearing?

[Jose Garcia]

15. The United States is now officially more tolerant of dreadlocks than Jamaica

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/world/jamaica-dreadlocks-ban-student-trnd/index.html

[TomSlick]

16. Wait, what? Is this a public school district?

Surely a public school district is not trying to regulate the length of male hair in 2020.

[GulfCoast66]

18. Good god! I wanted a mullet bad in 1983.

But was not allowed to have one. By my father! The school did not give a shit. And this was in Arkansas.

Never got the Mullet. And still thank my dad!

This is public school. Nor Sundae School.