Dyree Williams, a Black high school student in Texas, stopped attending class after being told that he had to cut his locs. According to CNN, the dress code policy at East Bernard High School states that “braided hair or corn rows will not be allowed.”
“Boys’ hair may not extend below the eyebrows, below the tops of the ears or below a conventional standup shirt collar, and must not be more than one-inch difference in the length of the hair on the side to the length of the hair on top,” the dress code states.
For Williams, however, changing his style is not an option.
“Once you cut that hair off, you cut off your line to your ancestors, you cut off your lineage, you cut off everything,” Williams’ mother, Desiree Bullock, told CNN. “And just, it’s not an option. … We don’t consider them dreadlocks because we don’t dread them, we love them.”
The 17-year-old moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, to East Bernard, located near Houston, in February. Since then, the family has been continually disputing the school’s policy.
The policy handbook is now removed from the district’s website. CNN, however, obtained a copy of the document. According to the handbook, the policy includes restrictions against “tall hair styles, side swept bang styles, and long hair dangling over shaved sides or shaved back of the head.”
“This also includes mullets and mullets in the making,” the dress code states. “Braided hair or corn rows will not be allowed. No extremes in hair styles.”
Bullock filed for a religious exemption on behalf of her son with the district’s superintendent. The request, however, was denied.
“The exemption request you filed has not been granted at this time,” Courtney Hudgins, East Bernard Independent School District’s superintendent wrote in an email to Bullock, according to CNN. “Assuming the children can meet the dress code requirements, as well as all necessary paperwork for enrollment, they are welcome to enroll with our district registrar. Please contact the registrar to make an appointment for enrollment. If you have any specific questions regarding the dress code, please contact the campus principal.”
Brian Klosterboer, attorney for ACLU of Texas, told CNN in a statement, “East Bernard ISD’s hair policy is deeply discriminatory and needs to be changed.”
“The policy contains explicit gender discrimination that recent court decisions have found to be unconstitutional and violate Title IX, and it also explicitly bans ‘braided hair or twisted rows/strands,’ which is a proxy for race discrimination and disproportionately harms Black students in the district,” Klosterboer said.
Bullock said she is homeschooling Williams and his two sisters right now because Texas doesn’t allow students to transfer to another school outside of the district where they have residency.
As Blavity previously reported, the House took a step closer to banning hair-related discrimination in March, passing the Crown Act with a vote of 235-189. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman introduced the Crown Act, which stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.
“Here we are today, standing on behalf of those individuals — whether my colleagues on the other side recognize it or not — who are discriminated against as children in school, as adults who are trying to get jobs, individuals who are trying to get housing, individuals who simply want access to public accommodations and to be beneficiaries of federally funded programs,” Coleman said in front of lawmakers.
