Twin teenagers Maya and Deanna Cook were given detention because they wore their hair in braids, and their parents are pissed about it!
According to NY Daily News, the twins attend Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden, right outside of Boston.
They were given detention and told they couldn’t participate on their school sports team after spring break if they returned wearing “professionally” hair. Their parents aren’t here for school’s policy and says it unfairly targets black kids.
The charter schools policy isn’t playing around.
“Students may not wear drastic or unnatural hair colors or styles such as shaved lines or shaved sides or have a hairstyle that could be distracting to other students (extra-long hair or hair more than 2 inch in thickness or height is not allowed.) This means no coloring, dying, lightening (sun-in) or streaking of any sort.”
The twins father also revealed to NY Daily News, that the school also bans hair extensions!
“When we read that part of the policy, we felt it unjustly impacted our daughters and unjustly impacted the population of colored people going to that school,” he said. “You don’t often see Caucasian females wearing extensions.”
The school issued a statement saying that its policies “foster a culture that emphasizes education rather than style, fashion or materialism. Our policy on hair extensions, which tend to be very expensive, is consistent with, and a part of, the educational environment that we believe is so important to our students’ success.”
What’s interesting about this is that 50% of the students are minorities.
“There are kids who are being rounded up and marched downstairs for daily hair inspections and the girls don’t really understand why they are treating them this way,” Cook said.
The twins have attended this private school for the past 11 years and their parents said they’ve worn a lot of hairstyles.
Apparently the school didn’t have an issue with their “chemically” straightened hair, even though it’s technically not natural.
“It was not flagged as a violation of the policy because it looked more caucasian,” Cook said.
