No Dreadlocks Allowed: Race, Hairstyles, and Cultural Exclusion in Schools

Abstract

Drawing on school dress codes, this paper analyzes the exclusion of students who wear hairstyles linked to people of African descent. Whereas existing scholarship outlines how policies banning these hairstyles contribute to the social exclusion of students by removing them from the classroom and extracurricular activities, this paper conceptually elaborates and empirically illustrates how these rules also symbolically exclude students through associating them with negative attributes. Content analysis of dress codes in Texas public schools that forbid dreadlocks demonstrates how students who wear this style not only lose school-related opportunities such as attending class, but are also linked to undesirable qualities such as being extreme and disruptive. By demonstrating how school dress codes socially and symbolically exclude students who wear dreadlocks this paper not only theoretically advances understanding of culture and racial inequality in schools, it also offers important insight on recent policies around hair discrimination. Across the United States there are efforts to outlaw school policies that bar hairstyles associated with race. The argument developed in this paper suggests that passage of these laws could potentially help to curb both the loss of school-related opportunities for students who wear these styles as well as their negative stereotyping.