I would like for you to stand with me on the sidelines of this conflict and try to determine what it is about. Let’s pursue the implicit football metaphor a little.

As is true in many contested rulings, it is hard to say just what happened first. Here is the order that seems sensible to me. Darryl George, pictured here, is suspended by the Barbers Hill Independent School District for violating the dress code. Darryl George and his mother, Darresha George sued the district, saying that they had violated the CROWN act. [1] At that point the Georges threw the famous red challenge flag.

The Georges say that the school district has, in fact, violated the law which says it may not “discriminate against a hair texture or protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race.”

There is no question is our minds, those of us gathered on the sideline waiting for the review to be concluded, that Darryl George’s hair style is “commonly…associated with race.” For our purposes, I am going to call that a fact.

The school district begins at another place, which should not surprise. What the school district is against, says Dr. Greg Poole, the superintendent, is “unlimited self-expression.” Darryl George’s hairstyle does, as the district sees it, violate the ban on “unlimited self-expression.” That is the other claim that the officials under the hood are taking into account and debating among themselves.
If you put the two rules together, you come up with a kind of hybrid standard in which self-expression may be limited by the district dress code unless it is a violation “historically associated with race.” That hybrid form really does not seem stable to me.

You could argue as the move for Affirmative Action did, that the historical and structural disadvantages that go with the black experience in America, justify a temporary race-related benefit to the current black generation. That was always opposed as unfair to the whole set of present generations. The Supreme Court eventually came around to that view. It has also been rejected by many black intellectuals as an automatic discounting of their abilities and achievements.

This problem as it is shaping up in Texas has both of those problems unless there are other extravagant ways of presenting oneself that are “historically associated” with other races. No one I have read is arguing that.

There is, however, an interesting parallel in the U. S. Army. The Army has recently accepted a stunning variety of “new looks” for American warriors and that variety includes turbans, beards, hijabs, and “under-turbans.”

“Our goal is to balance soldier readiness and safety with the accommodation of our soldiers’ faith practices, and this latest directive allows us to do that,” Lieutenant Colonel Randy Taylor said in a statement.

It is easier to see the value in the Army setting. You need combat-ready soldiers and this accommodation provides for that. There is nothing is the school setting in Texas, however, that can justify such an accommodation. Schools ordinarily reach for some abstraction like “maintaining at atmosphere conducive to study.” The anti-Vietnam black bands students (Tinker v. Des Moines) were said to disrupt the study atmosphere. That isn’t going to work in the Texas case, and I can think what will.

[1] An acronym with very high aspirations. It refers a law in which CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.”