*Image Credit- Comrade Sister: Women in the Black Panther Party (ACC Art Books, 2022).
It has been over three years since the outcome of one family’s two-year legal battle with Kensington primary school over its alleged refusal to admit their daughter, unless they cut her locks, incited firestorms of protests locally and internationally. Understandably, there were questions about how the ruling in Dale Virgo and ZV (By her mother and next friend Sherine Virgo) v Board of Management of Kensington Primary School, Minister of Education, Attorney General of Jamaica and Office of the Children’s Advocate [2020] JMFC Full 6 could have been delivered in a country known internationally for athletics, food and, of course, DREADLOCKS courtesy of Jamaica’s unofficial cultural ambassador Bob Marley, and other reggae icons who have popularized the hairstyle.
However, once the ruling in Virgo was published, it became easier to understand, by and large, how the court came to it decision based on the facts (as presented) and the evidence (as adduced) before it. While there are aspects of the ruling in Virgo that presented certain difficulties inasmuch as they seemed to perpetuate and reinforce certain questionable stereotypes surrounding black hair, the ruling itself, as well as the background that preceded it, encouraged much needed conversation around issues of black hair/identity, school grooming policies, and “respectability politics” in post-colonial Jamaica. Conversations of that variety are ones that we have been having for years and will undoubtedly continue to have for a great many more years to come.
Still, with so much having happened nationally, regionally, and internationally since 2020 it is easy to forget about the ruling that started it all (at least in 2020) through its spotlighting of highly relevant issues that tend to be trivialized in Jamaica. Be that as it may, the importance of a sustained national dialogue about the meaning and value of black identity in a post-colonial society that has only recently embarked on its personal decolonization project cannot be overstated. In times past, the topic of school grooming policies, and particularly those proscribing certain hairstyles, have captured (if even only for a short while) public attention, particularly when complaints are made about their differential application to black children with afro-textured hair. Much like the Kensington school’s “unwritten policy” proscribing afro-centric hairstyles, and in particular dreadlocks (except where religious justifications apply), regardless of whether they are well groomed or unhygienic, which precipitated the constitutional challenge in Virgo, these grooming policies are often imbued with racism and informed in their development by damaging ideas that black hair, particularly in its natural state, is ipso facto unkempt, unhygienic and ergo “INAPPROPRIATE”. This is but one of many means by which black identity, and its unbridled expression, is attacked, policed and denigrated in certain spaces of “respectability” in post-colonial Jamaica.
(Historical) Repression of black identity in Jamaica
This repression of black identity has a long arc in Jamaica’s history and can be traced back to the violent enslavement and genocide of black bodies (and psyches) following their forced mass transplantation to the “New World”, as well as their continued marginalization well into the colonial and post-colonial epochs. Since the enduring vestiges of slavery and colonialism, with all their strictures, have maintained a vice-like grip on our social institutions, the subject of black identity remains a contested one despite the numerical dominance of black peoples in Jamaica. Now, approximately one hundred and eighty-six (186) years after Emancipation and approximately sixty-two (62) years after Jamaica attained Independence from Britain, this status quo endures with the continued stifling, repression and policing of black identity and expression in supposed “spaces of respectability” such as schools and workplaces. This stifling, repression, and policing of black identity in these contexts may manifest, in some moments, as abrasive and explicit denouncements of afro-centric hairstyles, emblems, and other markers of “blackness”. While yet in other moments, it masquerades as a subtle, though no less insidious, “regulation” of afro-centric hairstyles through the enforcement of arbitrary, patently discriminatory, and usually pointless grooming policies targeting black hair.
Grooming policies, “respectability politics” & black identity in post-colonial Jamaica
The concept of “respectability politics” was first articulated by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her seminal work on the Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist church from 1880 to 1920 with a focus on the strategies it utilized to achieve “racial uplift” and “political advancement” during the Progressive Era (see generally, ‘African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race’ (1992), Chicago Journals, Vol. 17, Issue 2). In essence, “respectability politics” says to socially disadvantaged groups that if they behave or represent themselves to the socially advantaged groups in more “respectable” ways, those socially disadvantaged groups will have better access to upward social mobility. With “respectability politics” intentional cultural assimilation is the end game, and it is presented to socially disadvantaged groups as being the key to advancing socially (and otherwise) in spite (and especially because) of their marginalized status. Despite their numerical dominance, African-descendant peoples generally constitute the poorest and most socially disadvantaged group in post-colonial Jamaica.
In the case of grooming policies targeting afro-centric hairstyles, their application, intentionally or inadvertently, operate to enforce and maintain certain racialized codes of respectability by perpetuating ideologies which devalue, denigrate and police certain expressions of black identity. In so doing, those grooming policies effectively demand conformity in exchange for social currency, approval and acceptance by the ethnically elite groups who are invested in maintaining those racialized codes of respectability. Quite significantly, a recent study has posited that black women’s hair is 2.5 times as likely as white women’s hair to be perceived as “unprofessional” (Jasmine Payne Patterson, ‘The CROWN ACT: A jewel for combating racial discrimination in the workplace and classroom’ (Economic Policy Institute, July 26, 2023): <The CROWN Act: A jewel for combating racial discrimination in the workplace and classroom | Economic Policy Institute (epi.org)>). The foregoing data emanates from a study which was conducted in the American context where the California Senate and Assembly notably passed legislature notably enacted the “Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair Act (CROWN Act)” in 2019. Among other things, the CROWN Act expands the meaning of “race” in the context of employment discrimination to encapsulate certain “traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles”. In coming to that position, the drafters of the legislation had sharply critiqued case law that had previously understood hair texture to be an immutable and therefore protected trait but had excluded a hairstyle from the ambit of protection due to their understanding of it to be changeable and therefore “a matter of choice”. That understanding of immutability was challenged on the basis that its likely application gave rise to a characterization that affected black people, and black women in particular, disparately (See Corinn Jackson, ‘Dear Litter: Can We Still Maintain Hairstyle and Personal Grooming Policies?’ (December 9, 2019): <Dear Littler: Can We Still Maintain Hairstyle and Personal Grooming Policies? | Littler Mendelson P.C.>).
In post-colonial Jamaica, this problem of discrimination targeting black hair and the expression of black identity on basis of how one chooses to wear their hair is a problem that tends to be done in a way that sidesteps the issues that some, especially those who enjoy privilege because of their, would rather explain away. The Virgo ruling, with all the media and public attention it attracted, put these issues on the front burner once more by catalyzing national, regional, and international dialogues about them. Among the most important issues brought into focus by the decision in Virgo is the pressing need for us as Jamaicans to decolonize our social institutions, especially our schools. In this connection, the ruling as well as its factual antecedents made apparent the urgency with which the Education Act (passed in 1965) and concomitant regulations must be modernized so that school administrators no longer have the unfettered discretion to create and enforce arbitrary school rules which can undermine holistic student development as well as unjustifiably curtails the ability of students to express themselves in ways that are meaningful and personal to them via, for example, their choice of hairstyle. Certainly, a major concern with some of those same school rules, which continue to incite public disgruntlement even now, is that they bear no rational connection to any legitimate aim(s) or are otherwise disproportionate to their stated aim(s).
As at the time of writing, neither the Education Act nor concomitant regulations have been amended despite the Government of Jamaica having expressed, in the aftermath of the Virgo ruling, its belief that it was it is “…time to review and amend the Education Act to reflect a modern and culturally inclusive position that protects our children from being barred from any educational institution on the basis of wearing locs as an ordinary hairstyle irrespective of religious reasons.” (Jamaica Observer, ‘No child should be deprived of education because of hairstyle-PM’ (July 31, 2020): <No child should be deprived of education because of hairstyle — PM - Jamaica Observer >). However, the Ministry of Education and Youth (“MoEY”) has indicated that it is “currently reviewing” the Education Act and concomitant regulations with a view to ensuring that it meets the standards of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) as well as the Jamaican Constitution “regarding the rights of all Jamaicans” (Ministry of Education & Youth, Student Dress & Grooming: Policy for Public Educational Institution (April 2023), page 9).
The necessity of legislative reform in this area to establish clear boundaries and guidelines to constrain arbitrary rule-making and application by school administrators becomes clearer when one considers that shortly after the Virgo ruling was made public, the board of Kensington Primary School announced there had been a change in administration and ZV would now be free to attend the school with her locks in September of 2020. So, just like that, the school’s “unwritten policy” against the sporting of locks, except where there are religious justifications for the same, was history. The ruling in Virgo did more than just spark conversation about one school’s grooming policy, its refusal to admit a child with locked hair unless she cut it, and its questionable association of locked hair with “lice and junjo”. Indeed, the ruling provided a meaningful opportunity for us to interrogate and question our collective understanding of black identity in a post-colonial society which continues to grapple with the vestiges of colonialism. That grappling and the subsequent reckoning to follow is imperative this fledgling post-colonial nation is to incrementally decolonize its thoughts, language and its social institutions.
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