It’s 2017 and young black girls are still being policed for wearing natural hairstyles in an ongoing attempt to suppress their cultural identity.
Recently, a Massachusetts Charter School came under fire on social media for punishing two black female students for wearing their hair in box braids. Crazy right?
After refusing to take their braids out, 15-year-old twin sisters, Deanna and Mya Cook, were given weeks of daily detentions, kicked off their sports teams, and banned from attending any school events, including prom, at the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School.
Initially, the school released a statement defending the policy, which prohibits braided hair extensions.
That was up until Friday (May 19), when the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office ordered them to immediately cease enforcing the “unlawful” policy, and allow the twins to return to school and resume all school activities.
The girls’ adoptive white parents are speaking out against the school’s policy, calling it racist, and have filed a complaint with the NAACP and the state’s Anti-Defamation league, according to Boston 25 News.
In a letter to the school, the state AG’s office said that the school’s hair/makeup policy “includes a number of prohibitions that are either unreasonably subjective or appear to effectively single out students of color.” The letter went on to say that the policy “appears to specifically reference hair styles that are more likely to be worn by black female students.”
The letter also stated that braids and extensions “can be important expressions of racial culture, heritage, and identity, in addition to serving very practical needs unique to black women and girls.”
The school’s board of trustees has since voted to suspend the policy for the remainder of the year pending the outcome of the AG’s investigation, reports NBC Boston.
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