On June 14th Horizon Science Academy, a charter school in Lorain, OH, issued a new dress code for its 500 students in kindergarten to 10^th grade. The kids wear uniforms, but a dress code is still needed.

It contained provisions that didn’t surprise anyone (no tattoos, pants can’t be baggy), provisions that impressed with the endless creativity of youth (no fake glasses, no graffiti on the uniform), and the following upsetting sentence:

“Afro-puffs and small twisted braids, with our [sic] without rubber bands are NOT permitted.”

Ooh.

People got upset. It looked like a racist policy directed at common hairstyles for unprocessed African-American hair. A policy which would make life difficult for parents trying to send kids out looking presentable. As Cipriana of Urban Bush Babes wrote, “As a child who wore afro puffs and braids… these styles were absolutely essential in having a life that was not consumed by hair, especially since I am a twin.”

Nancy Redd, of HuffPost Live, said “If I wasn’t allowed to wear braids or Afro-puffs when I was a kid my mom would have had to shave my whole head off.”

Leila Noelliste at Black Girl Long Hair (BGLH) wrote that “small twisted braids” probably means box braids, a “style that black girls have worn for generations. Afro-puffs are essentially the black version of the ponytail…, yet the rules do not have a ban on ponytails for students of other ethnicities.” (Her post includes charming photos of these styles.)

“Our hair is viewed as radical, funky or unruly in its natural state, and restrictions are sometimes placed on us in academic and professional settings that do not extend to our non-black counterparts.”

What was the school thinking?

A Daily Kos writer guessed that those who made the policy “just weren’t thinking.” And perhaps to people in the head office of the charter school chain “natural hair suggests all sorts of negative stereotypes.” (The chain is Concept Schools, with 31 charter schools in the Midwest.)

Urban Bush Babes wrote of “blatant sentiments expressed” in this policy about hair texture. “Incredible this is still even an issue that parents, children and adults still have to deal with today!”

I wondered if it had something to do with fear of gangs. But for such young kids?

Horizon promptly sent out a letter of apology:

Recently, our school sent home a draft copy of the dress code for the 2013-2014 school year. In the dress code information packet, a statement was made about not allowing a certain hairstyle. This information has offended many people and by no means did we have any intention of creating bias towards any of our students. We truly apologize for this mistake and want to thank everyone for their feedback about the information in our handbook.

Furthermore, we are taking the matter seriously and again apologize for any offense it may have caused. We are currently taking the necessary steps to correct the information and to prevent this from ever happening again. We will be sending the final updated version of our dress code as soon as possible.

Huh. Prompt, and taking responsibility for their mistake – but not saying what the mistake was. Was it thinking that box braids and Afro-puffs were unruly? Low-class? Political? This is an example of an apology that cries for explanation.

In search of enlightenment I watched a spectacularly crappy/fubar-plagued half-hour video on HuffPost Live, so you won’t need to. The best-informed guest was James Knight, who’s on Horizon’s advisory board and has 4 sons at the school. He had barely gotten as far as saying it was a misunderstanding (yeah yeah, don’t they always say that?) when the connection froze. Host Nancy Redd and her other 3 guests spent 25 minutes discussing the obnoxiousness of banning Afro-puffs and small braids, the terrible message that sends to little black girls, etc. before the link to Knight was fixed.

He said they’d made great points, but it really was a misunderstanding. “It had nothing to do with young African-American ladies. It was really more so addressing young African-American men here at the school.”

What!?! Yes. The whole deal seems to have been directed at “a couple young gentlemen here in the middle school. One part of the policy is that students have their shirts tucked in.” Horizon Science Academy aims for “a certain type of college prep culture here, and we just wanted the young men to be well-groomed. But the school made a mistake, and for that we’re very apologetic.”

If you look at the dress code with the upsetting rule (reproduced on BGLH), the previous rule says, “Hair is not to touch the collar of shirt – may be asked to cut it if administration deems it necessary (Boys only).” They forgot to write “Boys only” on the no-Afro-puffs/braids rule.

Jayson Bendik, Dean of Students at Horizon, was kind enough to talk on the phone about this flap. He confirmed that the rule was never meant to apply to girls. It came up because of a couple of boys in the middle school. “One of the problems we had that was recurring was unkempt hair,” he said. “There were two specific instances, one Caucasian, one African-American.” It had something to do with “pouffy” hair. “We put the absolutely wrong verbiage on it. It was an oversight, an absolute – it was NEVER any policy that tries to discriminate…. it was a mistake in word choice.”

No racism, no gang infiltration, just the eternal effort of school administrators to keep up with youthful self-expression.

So girls can wear Afro-puffs or braids. Can boys? “It just has to be well-groomed.”