After serving more than a month of in-school suspension over his dreadlocks, a Black student in Texas was told he will be removed from his high school and sent to a disciplinary alternative education program on Thursday.
Darryl George, 18, is a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu and has been suspended since Aug. 31. He will be sent to EPIC, an alternative school program, from Oct. 12 through Nov. 29 for “failure to comply” with multiple campus and classroom regulations, the principal said in a Wednesday letter provided to The Associated Press by the family.
Principal Lance Murphy wrote that George has repeatedly violated the district’s “previously communicated standards of student conduct." The letter also says that George will be allowed to return to regular classroom instruction on Nov. 30 but will not be allowed to return to his high school’s campus until then unless he’s there to discuss his conduct with school administrators.
Barbers Hill Independent School District prohibits male students from having hair extending below the eyebrows, ear lobes or top of a T-shirt collar, according to the student handbook. Additionally, hair on all students must be clean, well-groomed, geometrical and not an unnatural color or variation. The school does not require uniforms.
George’s mother, Darresha George, and the family’s attorney deny the teenager’s hairstyle violates the dress code. The family last month filed a formal complaint with the Texas Education Agency and a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state’s governor and attorney general, alleging they failed to enforce a new law outlawing discrimination based on hairstyles.
The family alleges George’s suspension and subsequent discipline violate the state’s CROWN Act, which took effect Sept. 1. The law, an acronym for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” is intended to prohibit race-based hair discrimination and bars employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including Afros, braids, dreadlocks, twists or Bantu knots.
A federal version passed in the U.S. House last year, but was not successful in the Senate.
The school district also filed a lawsuit in state district court asking a judge to clarify whether its dress code restrictions limiting student hair length for boys violates the CROWN Act. The lawsuit was filed in Chambers County, east of Houston.
George’s school previously clashed with two other Black male students over the dress code.
Barbers Hill officials told cousins De’Andre Arnold and Kaden Bradford they had to cut their dreadlocks in 2020. Their families sued the district in May 2020, and a federal judge later ruled the district’s hair policy was discriminatory. Their pending case helped spur Texas lawmakers to approve the state’s CROWN Act. Both students withdrew from the school, with Bradford returning after the judge’s ruling.
link: https://www.aol.com/news/black-student-suspended-over-hairstyle-220842177.html
Imagine being sent to the school with all the unruly and undisciplined kids because of your hairstyle. Crazy and so fucking racist.
Isn’t this in Texas or somewhere equally as shitty? They would have sent him to prison for his hair if they could have. School to prison pipeline is real.
Texas passed the CROWN-act to combat hair-based racial discrimination because that very same school already lost two cases where they discriminated black youths because of their hair.
For once Texas is on the right side.
Even Texas said this was too far
Imagine being more bigoted than Texas
Removed by mod
Okay, where are the white kids being penalized by this rule?
It doesn’t matter if “these rules apply to white kids” if they are only actually applied to poc.
Removed by mod
“My niece has multicolour hair and hasn’t actually been suspended” is not the argument you think it is.
Removed by mod
“She hasn’t been suspended because she’s white” is definately not the argument you think it is.
(Yes, I know that wasn’t your intention but man, be careful how to word things maybe.)
Let’s take a look at the 2 situations here:
Situation 1:
POC going to a public school being disciplined due to their hair style.
Situation 2:
White kid going to a private school threatened with discipline due to their hair style, but not actually disciplined in any way just because their parents went in to talk to them.
I don’t know how any rational person looks at these and thinks “totally the same thing.”
Removed by mod
Right, I’m the one making unrelated things about race when you just spent a paragraph bitching about “POC” and “white” being used which is completely irrelevant. Go ahead and swap them for “black” and “caucasian”, it makes no difference to my post.
So are you arguing that this student’s parents didn’t go talk to the principal? Or do they need to get your brother specifically to talk to the principal, as he is the only one that can convince them to not enforce the rules for a specific student?
Oh, I see. The white family just happens to be better at arguing it than the black family. The black family that has hired a lawyer. To argue it.
Man, your brother should look into getting a law degree.
Question: Are black people ever affected by racism in any significant way?
This boy was in public school. Private schools can be much more descriminatory.
Removed by mod