Dear Editor,
The back-to-school season has confronted us, not just with the high prices of textbooks and the tail end of the promise to remove auxiliary fees, but also with the issue of the grooming standards in our schools.
Like most social issues, it comes within its own season and bears fruit within the media as the ridiculousness of one educational institution or another ripens into students losing out on learning opportunities because “rules are rules”. This time, however, the controversy has led to a social media high tide of pictures of black hair being uploaded with the hashtag #UnkemptJA by Jamaicans who are fed up with these rules after seeing a three-year-old boy being refused admission to a school because of his perceived unkempt hair by the administrators of Hopefield Prep.
Using #UnkemptJA as their platform, Jamaicans are challenging norms of beauty and respectability regarding their hair, which is routinely considered dirty and unprofessional if it is not cut or processed.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Many people have come out in support of Hopefield Prep and other schools like them; stating that rules should be followed and that anyone who does not like said rules can go elsewhere. These people are clearly the product of an education system that failed to encourage independent and critical thinking. Their best response to an important discussion regarding complex issues such as race, colonial baggage, institutional power, and human rights is the most disappointing mantra taught by their forebears, “Rules are rules.”
I am not quite sure how any educated person misses the reality that the policing of black hair and the push to ensure that black bodies are draped in dark lounge suits in a country that routinely has a temperature over 30 degrees Celsius is the undeniable product of a colonial culture. It is colonialism which made Europe and all things connected to it valuable and worthwhile, and made African identifiers such as dashikis the things you use to celebrate culture every once in a while. We mainstream European-ness by fostering a culture where black hair is chopped (less you be denied education) the minute it starts to become visibly kinky, and reward this with better employment prospects.
The negative treatment of black hair is not a minor issue, it is an indicator of the undying legacy of colonialism. A legacy we have not yet fully unpacked. A legacy that we have perpetuated on the facile but harmful notion that “rules are rules”. Our rules still do not recognise patois as our first language. Obeah, with its origins in African myalism, continues to be criminalised by our rules. And, we readily defend rules which deny education to black children whose hair has a kink or two. We have so normalised the oppression of our African-ness we don’t even see when rules are problematic.
Glenroy Murray
glenroy.am.murray@gmail.com
The back-to-school season has confronted us, not just with the high prices of textbooks and the tail end of the promise to remove auxiliary fees, but also with the issue of the grooming standards in our schools.
Like most social issues, it comes within its own season and bears fruit within the media as the ridiculousness of one educational institution or another ripens into students losing out on learning opportunities because “rules are rules”. This time, however, the controversy has led to a social media high tide of pictures of black hair being uploaded with the hashtag #UnkemptJA by Jamaicans who are fed up with these rules after seeing a three-year-old boy being refused admission to a school because of his perceived unkempt hair by the administrators of Hopefield Prep.
Using #UnkemptJA as their platform, Jamaicans are challenging norms of beauty and respectability regarding their hair, which is routinely considered dirty and unprofessional if it is not cut or processed.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Many people have come out in support of Hopefield Prep and other schools like them; stating that rules should be followed and that anyone who does not like said rules can go elsewhere. These people are clearly the product of an education system that failed to encourage independent and critical thinking. Their best response to an important discussion regarding complex issues such as race, colonial baggage, institutional power, and human rights is the most disappointing mantra taught by their forebears, “Rules are rules.”
I am not quite sure how any educated person misses the reality that the policing of black hair and the push to ensure that black bodies are draped in dark lounge suits in a country that routinely has a temperature over 30 degrees Celsius is the undeniable product of a colonial culture. It is colonialism which made Europe and all things connected to it valuable and worthwhile, and made African identifiers such as dashikis the things you use to celebrate culture every once in a while. We mainstream European-ness by fostering a culture where black hair is chopped (less you be denied education) the minute it starts to become visibly kinky, and reward this with better employment prospects.
The negative treatment of black hair is not a minor issue, it is an indicator of the undying legacy of colonialism. A legacy we have not yet fully unpacked. A legacy that we have perpetuated on the facile but harmful notion that “rules are rules”. Our rules still do not recognise patois as our first language. Obeah, with its origins in African myalism, continues to be criminalised by our rules. And, we readily defend rules which deny education to black children whose hair has a kink or two. We have so normalised the oppression of our African-ness we don’t even see when rules are problematic.
Glenroy Murray
glenroy.am.murray@gmail.com