The same week his state outlawed racial discrimination based on hairstyles, a Black high school student in Texas was suspended because school officials said his locs violated the district’s dress code.
Darryl George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, received an in-school suspension after he was told his hair fell below his eyebrows and ear lobes. George, 17, wears his hair in thick twisted dreadlocks, tied on top of his head, said his mother, Darresha George.
George served the suspension last week. His mother said he plans to return to the Houston-area school Monday, wearing his dreadlocks in a ponytail, even if he is required to attend an alternative school as a result.
Purely in terms of the African American term, that one has a bit more nuance than an othering word.
There was a good intentioned effort to stop referring to people by their physical characteristics as a group. So you started to see asian/Korean/Japanese/Chinese-american, native/indigenous-american, and African-American. It fell apart with white people because the privileged group is more aware that they’re not Caucasian or European, they’re “whatever they are”, so you still see Italian/Irish/german-american, but not European American.
African-American also has a specific demographic usage as roughly “the descendants of African slaves in America”, as distinct from “people from Africa”.
There’s been a reversal, and now it’s more expected that people are black or white (but only for those two demographics, never use color for Asian or indigenous people, but maybe brown for middle eastern or the Indian subcontinent, but it’s iffy)