Aiexpress – Darryl George, who is 18, has spent most of his junior year at Barbers Hill High School away from his friends because he was suspended or sent to an alternative education site. He isn’t getting hot food and can’t get to teaching tools, according to reports.
He did something wrong by putting his hair in long locs.
Since the beginning of the school year, George and Barbers Hill school officials have been fighting over his hairstyle and whether the dress code breaks a new state law that says hairstyles can’t be used as a reason to discriminate.
In court papers, George, who is black, says that the district’s months-long sentence has made him look bad and slowed down his education.
George complained, “School officials are treating me like a dog and harassing me.” “I am being subjected to cruel treatment and a lot of unkind words from many adults within the school, including teachers, principals, and administrators.”
Barbers Hill school officials, on the other hand, have refused to give in. They say George and his mother broke district rules on purpose so they could get money in court. And they’re sticking to their rules.
There are strict rules about how to dress at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, according to a full-page ad in The Houston Chronicle written by Superintendent Greg Poole. “They realize being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity and being a part of something bigger than yourself.”
A Texas judge said Thursday that Barbers Hill can keep striking George.
George and the school district’s lawyers went to court for a short time. Judge Chap B. Cain III ruled that the district’s dress code policy does not break Texas’s CROWN Act, which became law on September 1. The CROWN Act, which stands for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” makes it illegal to treat people differently because of their “hair texture or protective hairstyles associated with race.”
At the top of his head, George wears his hair in a twist. He calls them “locs” and sees them as a sign of ethnic pride, according to court documents. A bigger cultural debate is going on about the difference between locs and dreadlocks.
The Barbers Hill school district’s dress code says that boys’ hair can’t go below their eyebrows, earlobes, or the collar of their T-shirts. Men’s hair also can’t “be gathered or worn in a style” that lets it fall to these lengths “when let down,” the rule says.
At the top of his head, George wears his hair in a twist. He calls them “locs” and sees them as a sign of ethnic pride, according to court documents. A bigger cultural debate is going on about the difference between locs and dreadlocks.
Even though the CROWN Act doesn’t say anything about hair length, the lawmakers who wrote it said before Thursday’s decision that the law still protects George’s hairstyle because it says that districts can’t punish students who wear their hair in certain styles, like locs.
State Rep. Rhetta Bowers, a Democrat from Garland, was the author of this bill. “Those styles are protected no matter how they are worn,” she said. “When people in our culture lock their hair, they are locking it up to grow.”
The fight between George and the Mont Belvieu school system has gotten attention from all over the country. It has also brought up a fight in Texas in 2020 over hair discrimination. He was then told that he couldn’t go to his graduation event unless he cut his locs, which is black hair that is worn in a bun. Their cousin, who was a junior at the time, was also suspended from school because his hair was too long.
The families of the two kids sued the school in federal court, saying that the policy was unfair to them. A judge ordered the school district not to enforce the dress code rules until further notice. The case is still being argued in court, and the judge’s narrow ruling didn’t stop the district from keeping the policy or applying it to other students in the future. It did, however, help Texas sign the CROWN Act, which has now been passed in 23 other states as well. That new law is what the trial on Thursday is all about.
Lawmakers and civil rights activists say that Barbers Hill’s policy is based on racist ideas and stereotypes about black people. Poole, the director, turned down the Tribune’s request for an interview. Poole said in an email sent through the district’s spokesperson that the George family’s case was about money. He said that Darresha George, George’s mother, moved her son to Barbers Hill from a neighborhood next door that didn’t have a hair policy.
“His guardian understood fully what our rules and regulations were, yet he was still enrolled, and shortly thereafter we heard from an activist and a lawyer,” said Poole. “His lawyer has made it clear that this is about money.”
Mary Darresha George, who is married to Darryl George, sued the Barbers Hill school district and state leaders in federal court in September. She says that the district is breaking the CROWN Act and federal civil rights law, and that Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are not following through with the CROWN Act. George wants to be paid damages “in the amount approved at trial” in that case, which is still being argued. The hearing on Thursday is a separate case that Barbers Hill officials filed in state court. In this case, they want the judge to say that they are not breaking the Crown Act.
Allie Booker, George’s lawyer, did not answer any of our multiple calls for comment. It was not possible to get in touch with the George family directly.
School dress code rules in Texas have been questioned in more than one place, not just Barbers Hill. An ACLU of Texas study released this month found that 26% of school districts had dress codes with hair length rules only for boys during the 2022–23 school year. And 7% of the districts that were polled specifically banned hairstyles and patterns that were linked to race. Before the Crown Act went into force, the survey was done.
As the story says, hair-length rules for boys only go back to the 1960s, when school districts tried to make boys look “clean-cut” as more and more men wore longer hair. The study says that these kinds of rules “shame and punish students for simply showing up in class as their true selves.”
Caro Achar, one of the report’s authors, said, “The idea behind them is to keep things in order and to develop a very clear sense of how students should behave in the classroom.” ” But the impact is that it’s discriminatory, and students feel left out and targeted.”
Discrimination based on hair goes back at least to the 1800s, when slave owners made black women cover their hair or straighten it to fit European ideas of beauty. To fight back against this, black hair has been used as a sign of power and personality, especially during the 1970s and 1980s Black Power movement.
Even so, there is still social pressure to meet white beauty norms. A new poll found that more than 20% of black women between the ages of 25 and 34 have been fired because of their hair. The poll also found that black women with curly or wavy hair are twice as likely as black women with straight hair to experience microaggressions at work.
Rodney Ellis, a commissioner in Harris County and the sponsor of a motion to make the CROWN Act law in that county, talked about how his three daughters straightened their hair to fit in with their peers.
“Sometimes I would try to push them to conform to a certain style that I thought was appropriate,” he said. “Over time, I grew to appreciate the particular challenges that black women and black girls have to go through.”
In 2021, Harris County became the first county in Texas to pass the CROWN Act when the Harris County Commissioners Court agreed to it. Ellis was disgusted to learn about what was going on at Barbers Hill. He saw the school district’s actions as part of a larger national plan to stop anti-racist education efforts, like limiting how history and slavery are taught in public schools or limiting library books.
“When young students are punished for simply expressing their cultural identity through their hair, it sends a chilling message that their heritage is unwelcome and that they do not belong,” said Ellis.
George said in a statement he turned in in January that his mental health and grades have gotten worse since August, when he started getting in trouble for his hair.
A spokesman for Poole said that the district was looking forward to the court making clear what the CROWN Act means.
“Those with agendas wish to make the CROWN Act a blanket allowance of student expression,” said Poole. “Again, we look forward to this issue being legally resolved.”
