By JRP Studio @Adobe Stock
“The Team’s Gonna Miss You”
In an abbreviated version of Jason L. Riley’s latest WSJ article, one reader sums it up:
- Family moves into town, enrolls child in school, signs contract which includes strict dress code.
- Student ignores code and is disciplined.
- Story should now end. Good story about keeping your word.
Here from Jason L. Riley is his article on a lesson for Darryl George:
In 1997, John Wooden wrote a memoir in which the Hall of Fame coach emphasized the importance of maintaining standards.
In the early 1970s, UCLA had “a rule against facial hair.”
When then-star-center Bill Walton, who went on to play for the Portland Trail Blazers, showed up to practice wearing a beard after a 10-day break, the following exchange occurred:
Wooden: “Bill, have you forgotten something?”
Walton: “Coach, if you mean the beard, I think I should be allowed to wear it. It’s my right.
Wooden: “Do you believe in that strongly?”
Walton: “Yes, I do, coach. Very much.”
Wooden: “Bill, I have a great respect for individuals who stand up for those things in which they believe. I really do. And the team is going to miss you.”
Coach Wooden continue:
Bill went to the locker room and shaved the beard off before practice began. There were no hard feelings. I wasn’t angry and he wasn’t mad. I think if I had given in to him, I would have lost control not only of Bill but of his teammates.
Times Have Changed
Bill Walton did not make a big deal of the school’s grooming policy, explains Mr. Riley. It was an era much different from last year when Darryl George, a high-school student in the Barbers Hill school district near Houston, “was disciplined for violating his school’s policy on hair length.”
Darryl, who is black, has long dreadlocks. The school’s dress code for boys says that hair may not “be gathered or worn in a style that would allow the hair to extend below the top of a t-shirt collar, below the eyebrows, or below the ear lobes when let down.”
Because he refused to cut his dreadlocks, Darryl was assigned to in-school suspension. His family responded by filing a federal civil-rights lawsuit. A new Texas law, the Crown Act, prohibits schools and employers from discriminating based on someone’s hairstyle. The George family alleges that Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton allowed the school district to violate the new law.
Meanwhile, Barbers Hill officials asked a state court to clarify whether the Crown Act applies to hair length—which isn’t mentioned in the legislation—and last week Judge Chap B. Cain III of the 253rd District Court ruled in favor of the school district and upheld Darryl’s suspension. “The CROWN Act does not render unlawful those portions of the Barbers Hill dress and grooming restrictions limiting male students’ hair length,” Judge Cain said. The George family said it will appeal that ruling. The civil-rights suit is pending.
The purpose of the dress code, according to the Barbers Hill superintendent, is to “teach grooming and hygiene, instill discipline, maintain a positive and safe learning environment, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards, and teach respect for authority.”
The George family moved to the district from one that had no restrictions on hair length … Darryl’s mother had signed a student handbook that explained their new district’s grooming policy.
“We have African-American students not subject to the hair limitation length because they qualify for religious reasons,” superintendent Greg Poole told the Huston Chronicle. “We do not have an exception for ‘I don’t want to follow the rules.’ ”
No Racial Bias
Darryl deserves equal treatment, not special treatment, argues Mr. Riley.
… and no one has presented evidence that he is a target of racial bias. The last thing he needs is to be surrounded by adults who encourage him to see any confrontation with people in authority as racially motivated and who insist on pretending that black people are still living in the 1950s.
Darryl is sitting alone in school instead of in a classroom with fellow students because he refuses to get a haircut. He says it’s “lonely,” but it’s also unnecessary.
Racial disparities in income and employment often stem from racial disparities in education. People who want to make a martyr of this young man over a trendy hairdo aren’t doing him any favors.
Bill Walton was plagued with foot problems during his basketball playing years. He required multiple surgeries. Walton was a skinny, scrawny kid who “stuttered horrendously.” As a shy reserved person and a reserved basketball player, Walton says he found “a safe place in a life in basketball.”
Bill Walton overcame stuttering and embarked on a second career as a sportscaster, working both as a studio analyst and color commentator with stints for several networks and teams.
