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Ever since enslaved Black people arrived on the shores of the English colony of Virginia in 1619, white legislators at various levels of government have designed laws to explicitly control and suppress Black communities. In 1857, in its Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court decided that Black people were not citizens and did not have the right to sue in federal court. Our bondage continued even after the abolition of slavery in 1865: Southern states legislated “Black Codes” immediately after the Civil War, denying Black people the right to vote and restricting their movement. In some municipalities, called “sundown towns,” Black individuals were not allowed to enter after dark. “Whites only” signs littered public spaces throughout the 20th century. It was illegal in so many ways for Black people to simply be in a country supposedly built on the unalienable, natural rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
When racism is the overarching, unwritten law of the land, any and every rule can and will be used to control Black people. Those who would have us return to a period of legal segregation don’t need to bring back signposts to separate us when they can discriminate in other ways, simply on the basis of how we look, how we dress, and how we wear our hair. When dress and grooming codes reinforce white norms, being Black becomes a violation.
In December 2019, Barbers Hill Independent School District in Mont Belvieu, Texas, a suburb east of Houston, decided to begin enforcing a dress code policy that’s been on the books for 30 years. The policy includes sections on clothing, head coverings, and hair: “Male students’ hair will not extend, at any time, below the eyebrows, or below the ear lobes. Male students’ hair must not extend...