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Forcing Black Students To Shave Their Natural Afro Hair Is Dehumanising. I Should Know.
I was in grade 10 when I returned home to my small town from a trip to Kenya to visit my sick grandmother. My 4A/3CAfro-textured hair had been neatly braided into tiny twist-braids at a local salon in Nairobi. It took a gruelling five hours and a few first-timer tears for my hair to be twisted airtight from the base of my scalp — a technique to stop the pinky-sized braids from unravelling. Finally, I was going beyond just speaking a few elementary words in Swahili to connect with my culture.
However, my fresh protective style only survived a few days in regional New South Wales before disciplinary figures at my private school sternly picked me up for having “an extreme hairstyle” that was “not acceptable.”
In my eyes, the braids complied with the uniform rulebook. They were above the collar, above the ears, neat, short and sensible. I felt defeated and now insulted, realising my cultural identity (my Afro in its natural state and its corresponding protective styles) could not be embraced without being outlawed as “extreme.”
After all, the Oxford Dictionary defines the word “extreme” as “the furthest away from the centre [of normal].”
As a 21-year-old reflecting on my school’s grooming code, I realise they made it extremely hard for students of the African diaspora to embrace their identities.
While penning this piece, 5-year-old Cook Island boy Cyrus Taniela’s Brisbane private school threatened to expel him for his long hair. It hit home that white supremacist sentiment is so rife in our society that it’s hidden in plain sight — a school dress code, for instance. Cyrus’ mum explained to a tribunal that her son was growing his hair for an upcoming traditional haircutting ceremony. Although they won their case against their school, I am deeply saddened and frustrated to hear this child has had his cultural identity challengedlike this.
It made me realise my school years were spent being coerced into shaving my head —...
