Maybe it’s because I’m a mom, but I often get the urge to go Rambo complete with the bandana when I see innocent children being brought to teams by injustice. AND!! I can’t with these stories of children being COMMANDED to no wear their hair in the manner it grows from their heads. This just in:

A 7-year-old girl named Tiana Parker was recently sent home from Deborah Brown Community School, the charter school she attends in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for failing to comply with school policy. Her violation? Tiana, who is African American, has dreadlocks and school rules state that “hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, mohawks, and other faddish styles are unacceptable.”

Wait, wait, wait. Faddish? Seriously?

Curious how two of the three hairstyles explicitly banned by the school happen to be two of the ways black women can wear their hair without processing it. The term “faddish” also seems remarkably inappropriate considering how human beings have been ‘froing and locking their hair for the entirety of our species’ existence. That is one hell of a long running fad.

Hump. Let’s just single out this child’s hair as “distracting” because well, then maybe you can blame her if your school test badly. Yes, we know our state scores are below standards but….look over there!! A little black girl with dreads! How crazy. A girl with kinky hair wears her hair in a hairstyle for kinky hair. That’s just nuts, isn’t it, Gertrude?

I don’t know about you but I’m glad that parents are allowing their little girls to actually know and experience caring for their God-given hair without burning their scalps off with perm so the Gertrudes of the world can be…less “distracted.”