"I was bewildered that the all-white staff in charge of a predominantly Black school would have the audacity to shame something so closely tied to Black identity."
(The Daily Beast) -- ‘Discriminatory’: ACLU, NAACP Go After Florida School That Banned Child for Dreadlocks
The father of a 6-year-old boy who was denied admittance to a Florida Christian school because he has dreadlocks has filed an “illegal racial discrimination” complaint to the state with the ACLU and NAACP.
When Clinton Stanley Jr. arrived for the first day of school at A Book's Christian Academy in Apopka this August, his father alleges that the school denied his son’s entry because he had dreadlocks. His father’s interaction with school officials went viral when he shared his filmed conversation with them on Facebook. When asked why his son couldn’t enter, even with his hair “tied up,” an official tells him “it’s in the handbook.” The school denied that they refused the boy because of race, instead, pointing to a policy that enforces a “tapered cut, off the collar and ears.”
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/aclu-naacp-take-on-florida-schools-discriminatory-hair-policy-after-boy-banned-for-having-locs
ACLU Blog:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-inequality-education/my-black-son-was-sent-home-first-grade-because-his
Great to see the ACLU getting involved!
Not saying it's necessarily the case here, but many of these so-called Evangelical “Christian Schools” have an appalling history on race relations. Both Margery Eagan (Boston Globe) in her article "Race, not abortion, was the founding issue of the religious right" and Chris Ladd's (Forbes Magazine) article"Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned Dixie Republican both document this. The history is very ugly and ferociously racist. But of course, the thing that really protected these schools was there hiding behind "religious freedom".
How sick, how very sick, can you be to employ religious liberty arguments to keep God's creation out of your school. These tactics are many things. But, certainly not Christian.