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

  • geogle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is a newsworthy isolated incident. It’s newsworthy because of the ridiculous stance of the principal.

    Can we talk about France’s stance on hijabs in school?

    • canuckkat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not isolated at all. Black kids (especially girls) get targeted all the time. It’s usually ignored or doesn’t make the news.

    • Rengoku@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Lol if you think banning hijab as a good whataboutism example wait till you hear your hair is banned and must wear hijab to even attend public school.

      • BellyPurpledGerbil@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Just here to point out that UK schools have also illegally forbidden some students from wearing afro hairstyles. In that case and this one, it’s against the law. The hope is that this treatment will not continue in both cases. We don’t need to resort to playing the suffering Olympics or whose country is worse pissing contests

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Actually the French law allows for students to wear crosses. So it doesn’t really apply to Christians.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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        1 year ago

        The law in its majestic equality forbids Christian, Atheist, and Muslim alike to pray facing Mecca, to wear hijabs, or dresses that look a little too “ethnic.”

        • emptyother
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          1 year ago

          that look a little too “ethnic.”

          What ethnic, btw? Would a lusekofte be disapproved? :P

          • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            That’s literally how every discriminatory law in a country with protections against descrimination works. It bans anyone from doing something that primarily is done by the group you’re trying to target.

            In states like Georgia where lots of black churches assist their congregation with overcoming the hurdles republicans set in place to make it harder for black and brown people to vote they ban religious organizations from assisting in the exact ways the black churches were assisting. Voter ID laws disproportionately affect poor and minority voters who often have difficulty obtaining and maintaining a current ID and often don’t drive at all due to the high cost of car ownership. These laws don’t explicitly state “people with dark skin aren’t allowed to vote” but surpressing black voters is both the goal and effect of these laws

            If you literally write “no hijabs” the law will be struck down in a heartbeat, so instead they write a law that says “no religious clothing” because what religious clothing do people wear? Hijabs.

            But I’m sure you already knew this, because you either have to be extremely dense or pretending to be extremely dense for the sake of supporting discrimination to make the argument that you did

              • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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                1 year ago

                That’s where the design of the US government was somewhat ingenuous. Rather than explicit rules that may become outdated or prevent needed action in a timely manner, it was designed as a framework to allow the government to flex and change as times change.

                The one thing that wasn’t foreseen was a consolidated takeover of both a significant portion of government and journalism by the same vested interests, combined with intense consilidation of private businesses into unfathomably massive and powerful monopolies

          • emptyother
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            1 year ago

            But you got to admit it doesnt hurt every religion equally.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Which of those religions considers it a requirement to wear certain clothing?

        We all know who it was aimed at.

      • Estiar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Then that school policy is fine too, as it bans Anyone from wearing dreadlocks. This applies to the white Texans, the Hispanic Texans, the Black Texans etc.

        That reasoning doesn’t work. It’s targeted against a certain group of marginalized people just like the Hijab law and the same principle.

      • coltorl
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        1 year ago

        ANY religious clothing is banned in France. This isn’t Discriminatory, as it applies to Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc just as it does to Muslims.

        When you want to consider the fairness of a law, you shouldn’t consider solely the fact that it is applied equally. But, also, that when it is applied, who it impacts the most. Christians do not make it a tenet of their religion to dress in garb, Islam does. The law therefore impacts Muslims more than Christians. From there, we can reasonably determine why a law was made. A law crafted that impacts one specific people more than another can still be considered discriminatory solely because of that fact. Take hair dress codes for example, even if they are applied equally, who are the kids that get got for violations most often? Not white kids…

    • blindbunny@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Can we talk about France’s stance on hijabs in school?

      Yeah. I support it. I also support this young women’s choice to hair style.

      Your false equivalency says more about you then anything else you wrote.

      Get every fucking church out of public school and tax them.

      • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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        1 year ago

        Okay, so how much money would it cost to get you to openly admit what happened to this dude is wrong and it’s irrelevant what happens in other countries?

        $10 via Cashapp? Venmo, perhaps?