Loc'd Afro Hair and Antiquated School Rules | Musings of a Black Female Adoptee

He moved to a new state, started in a new school and was given an award that noted his leadership skills. He’s made the honor roll. He may only be in first grade, but to me, it still counts.  

“He” is my son and he did it all with his hair in locs.

So I think you can understand why watching a school use a black boy with locs as an ‘example’ to ban him from walking at graduation because of a cultural hairstyle has been weighing heavily on my mind lately. 

It makes me mad. It makes me scared. 

It makes me mad because locing our son’s afro was a conscious choice we made to help start forming his identity. I love seeing his bright eyes and smile as he rushes to the mirror after a retwist or a new style. In our family, locs are HIS thing; a part of HIS identity.

It makes me scared because we chose to provide him some protection too.

We don’t talk a ton about his accident that happened 4 years ago. It’s an accident that had him airlifted to the nearest head trauma hospital to have a large piece of metal removed from his forehead. The result was he now has two scars. One that sits between his eyebrows. Not quite a Harry Potter thunderbolt, the skin there is smooth and puckered. I can feel the indent left by the impact of metal.

But he also has a scar on the top of his scalp that runs from ear to ear. It’s a quarter-inch of smooth pink expanse. It’s his sensitive spot when getting his locs retwisted. But other than that it easy to forget that its there. 

And that was our intention.

Covering it isn’t an act of keeping it a secret. But as a means of allowing our son some reprieve of answering even more questions outside of the scar on his forehead. He remembers his accident, some of the helicopter ride, the stay in the hospital, but the details are still blurry to him.

He was three and a half when it happened. When my 3-year-old was rolled in on a stretcher from the helipad. The doctors didn’t know what to expect. All they knew was they had a small child with a major head injury, with the possibility of losing his eye. They expected him to be either unconscious, in major shock or hysterical. But what they found was a little boy that was calm though he was alone and in pain. A little boy that was courteous though he was confused. Thanking the surgery techs as they prepped him for surgery.  Even at three, he was displaying personal qualities he would be recognized for at the age of seven.

His operating surgeon said our little boy had the strength under pressure that he didn’t see out of most grown adults with major injuries.  

But knowing that his hair could be used as an excuse for why he couldn’t walk in his high school graduation ceremony makes me sick to my stomach.

You can see how it would make me mad, that there are people and organizations will that want to ban him from his rightful rewards and acknowledgment of gifts because they refuse to acknowledge that afro hair and black hairstyles don’t make black people less than.

Afro hair in locs, or any style, is not a distraction. It doesn’t lessen one’s learning ability. It doesn’t predetermine one’s intelligence or respectability or aptitude to do a job.

And yet, organizational (in the school systems or work environment) rules on hair and how it should be worn and kept are what keeps false assumptions like those listed above alive. They are racial rhetoric that upholds that if black people don’t “conform” to whiteness and its “traditionality” that they will be punished.

THIS is why I am a scared mother of a black boy. DeAndre Arnold isn’t just “another black boy” refusing to “follow the rules.” He’s a reflection of my son. Another black boy who has hair that represents him, his culture and his identity. I don’t need to know his loc story to know this. I don’t need to know the “why” behind why he and his parents have chosen to loc his hair. 

But I offer my son’s story to give some perspective. 

Why I am scared isn’t because the rule exists its because it exists and people refuse to see why it should change.

What I do know in Arnold's case is that the ‘rule’ has existed for 30 plus years. It is most definitely steeped in racism. When we know that hair does not distract from learning, achieving goals or being a decent human being why do these rules still exist.? Better yet why are black boys and girls around this nation being used as “examples” to keep discriminatory rules in place?

For no other reason than “the rule was already made.” 

And to that I sad “And many rules should be changed when they are no longer useful.” 

People love the excuse “well it was in the student handbook.” I bet it was. I also know these handbooks and rules should be reviewed and/or revised every year. Our current school district’s dress code clause has been revised five times since it was adopted in 1972. 

We know the rules can be changed. But it usually comes down to most organizations that don’t want to change. It is the ultimate example of “don’t buck the status quo.”

We shouldn’t have to live in a country that wearing afro hair has to be “legalized.” Our black and brown children shouldn’t have their future’s impacted because of antiquated “rules” that people don’t want to change even though they are more harmful than good. 

At the moment my son is playing outside. I asked him what he loved about his locs. He breaks out into an instant smile. “They’re cute.” He giggles (yes 7-year-olds still giggle) and says “watch this!” he shakes his ropes of hair so they fly around his head as he laughs. It’s an image I will see and reason why I always fight the organization that says they have a rule against my child’s choice of hairstyle. I have yet to see how it has negatively impacted his education, personality or learning ability and I don’t think it ever will.