The natural state of someone’s hair should never be a hindrance to their ambition and opportunity

This week the Halo Code was launched by 30 young black students who formed the Halo Collective. Their aim is to end race-based hair discrimination. Under the 2010 racial equalities act, race-based hair discrimination has been illegal, but it still happens all the time in schools and work places, where natural hair styles can lead to be being excluded or judged negatively.

Earlier this year, after a three-year battle, school pupil Ruby Williams was awarded an out-of-court settlement from her school, which had sent her home several times, not because she set off the fire alarm to get out of double biology, but because she grew her Afro-textrured hair naturally. Can you imagine? A 14-year-old kid being sent home because the hair she was born with did not comply with school regulations?  

Her school, as recently as 2017, changed the wording of its uniform policy, which had said “afro style hair, including buns, should be of reasonable length and size”. It took until 2017 for someone to feel empowered enough to complain, which means the 2010 law, has had as much impact as a fluffy-haired politician in Brexit negotiations.  

When I was in primary school back in the early 80s, a Nigerian girl called Yvonne joined our school for a few terms when her father had a temporary work placement in the UK.  We were told with much excitement from our teacher that a new girl was coming, “All the way from Africa!”

Yvonne arrived to a class of mostly white children and a couple who looked more like me. We were a class of eight- and nine-years-olds. Our teacher stood with Yvonne at the front of the room and introduced her. As she did so, she bounced her palm on her hair and said, “What lovely hair she has, hasn’t she?”

I can only imagine how baffling and uncomfortable that must have been for this kid in a new school and a new country. Later, Yvonne stood patiently in the playground as her new playmates gathered around to “have a go” at patting her hair. We know now that it’s wildly racist to normalise gawping at and touching someone’s natural hair but there we are, that was the 80s for you.  

My own hair, once I hit my teens, became an ultra thick mass of tight black curls. The hours I spent in the 80s trying to “tame” it and straighten it, desperate for it to look “normal”. Nothing worked in the days pre-hair irons and I endured daily ridicule about my “mop head”. For black kids, it was much worse. My secondary school from the outside looked like a model of multicultural tolerance and acceptance but if black boys allowed their hair to grow longer than half a centimetre, kids would chant in terrible Jamaican accents, “Tek dis boy to de barber shop!” None of the black kids chanted this. And no teacher ever, not for a moment, thought, or even perhaps knew, that this was racist.

Now us 1980s kids have grown up and we have allowed policies in schools and work places to be made, which are against natural afro-textured hair. The argument that hair might get in the way of another child’s vision, as it was in Ruby’s case, is as ridiculous as saying, “Peter! You are a few inches too tall, you shall have to chop off your head and pop it in your locker until lunchtime.” 

It wasn’t until I went to university and met my friend, whose parents were from Barbados, that I heard, for the first time, a person say out loud that judgements on her hairstyle were racist. These conversations were being had but not in the mainstream, and not in time to make Ruby Williams and scores of other children’s time at school a happier time.  

The launch of Halo Code is a significant step in making schools and businesses cease penalising children and employees because of the hair they were born with. Forty six per cent of parents with children who have afro-textured hair said their child’s hair flouts a school rule.  

Unilever is the first company to adopt the Halo Code and send the message that the natural state of someone’s hair should never be a hindrance to their ambition and opportunity – or, frankly, anyone else’s business.  

My son’s hair is the the thickest, curliest hair I have ever seen. He hates having it cut and lets it grow free. It’s a part of his identity. I was ready for a rumble when he started secondary school, lest anyone dare say he should cut it. However, on the website of the school he was going to, was a lad with a tall, natural afro. It was almost, though not quite, and here I brag, as big as my son’s hairstyle. My fears were allayed. A school that lets kids be who they are instills in them confidence, which will serve them better than test results.