Braid Ban Called Racist School Administrators Call Hairstyle A Sign Of Gangs; Blacks Say Rule Equates Their Culture With Crime

When Aqueelah Nelson put her hair in a French roll, parting it on the right, her mom thought it looked nice. Officials at her junior high thought she looked like a gang member.

Aqueelah was given a choice: Change the hairstyle, sit alone in the library all day or go home.

Officials at Rickover Junior High School in this suburb south of Chicago say they’re fighting gangs by banning certain hairstyles. But some black pupils and their parents call it discrimination.

“You don’t see a lot of white girls running around with braids in their hair,” Torie Nicholas, 12, said after school Monday. “They should be worrying about our education, not what we have in our hair.”

The school instituted the ban two years ago after law enforcement officials said the styles may be gang related. It bans braids, beads, cornrows, dreadlocks, hair coloring and colored hair extensions for everyone, and ponytails for boys.

“We’re not saying the kids who have these things on are in gangs,” School Superintendent Thomas Ryan said. “We have to make sure our children are not trying to mimic how a gang member would look.”

The district instituted uniforms three years ago: navy trousers or culottes with a collared, powder-blue top, and no gym shoes except in gym.

Ryan said school officials are trying to keep pupils safe from the four gangs that now inhabit this community 28 miles south of Chicago.

Matteson Police Chief Larry Burnson, a member of the South Suburban Gang Initiative, said hairstyles related to gangs are rare. He said wearing beads of a certain color, symbol-sculpting - “GD” for Gangster Disciples shaved into one’s head - as well as parting hair on a particular side have been known to connote gang activity.

Blacks account for 35 percent of the 1,450 pupils in the district’s three schools. The district is 54 percent white and 11 percent Hispanic.

Ryan said only Aqueelah’s mother, Anne Nelson, has complained about the ban. But other black pupils and adults say braids are a part of their cultural heritage. And they say the school is sending the message that black culture and gangs are synonymous.

“Egyptian queens wore cornrows thousands of years ago,” said Geri Duncan Jones, executive director of the American Health and Beauty Aids Institute, a trade association. “It’s really an expression of royalty and presence and beauty.”