Discourses of Distraction: An Analysis of School Dress Codes on Hair

• In Event: All We Have, All We Need: Black Girls as Educational Stakeholders Disrupting Hyper-Punishment in Schools

Abstract

Overview. Black girls are pushed out, threatened, and punished for violating restrictive school dress code policies at disproportionately higher rates (Blake, Butler, & Darensbourg, 2011). School policies, such as those that prohibit headdresses, suggest that all girls should adhere to White, middle class standards of femininity and presentation (Brodsky & Evans et al., 2018). This study is a critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1995) of Maryland’s high school dress codes, examining the racial and gendered language around student hair. By specifically looking at language and discourse, I consider who is using language to do what, to whom, when, where, and how (Bloome & Carter et. al, 2008) to answer the questions:

1) What do current Maryland county and district level policies state about student hair?
2) How does the language in Maryland’s public high school dress codes make implicit or explicit gendered or racial references when mentioning hair, if at all?
Theoretical Framework. This paper employs a Critical Race Feminist framework to center the analysis in how the intersections of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression are perpetuated in Maryland’s school dress code policies on hair.

Methods. This study employs a critical discourse analysis to better understand how power and privilege appear in the policies that govern the daily proceedings of schools. This paper uses a subset of findings from a larger document analysis study that examines the racial and gendered references in school handbooks from every county in Maryland. The findings from that study led to focusing this analysis on hair policies. This study uses the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 official dress code policies from the online student handbooks in school districts in Baltimore City, Charles County, Prince George’s County, Caroline County, and Worcester County.

Preliminary Findings. I find that in the student handbooks, the policy language includes 1) personal cleanliness and neatness, 2) ban headdress except for religious reasons, and 3) mention student disruption or distraction. The discussion focuses on the historical and political context of hair policies and how the policies reinforce dominant, negative narratives about Black women and girls’ hair as a tactic to suppress identity and resistance.

Significance. This paper builds upon the handful of studies that use critical discourse analysis as a framework to analyze school dress code policies, particularly upon those that directly examine the gendered and racial aspects of the language in dress code policies focusing on hair. My findings have great implications for policy and practice, suggesting that it is critical to incorporate discussion about the gendered and racial references in school dress codes during teacher and administrator professional development and pre-service teacher education and how they affect punishment. With regard to research, this study demonstrates the necessity of conducting studies on smaller scales (i.e., district-level) and in different areas of the United States as contextual geographics are important when using empirical evidence to encourage educators and administrators to amend their policies.

Author

• Cierra Kaler-Jones, University of Maryland - College Park