Coach Threatens to Ban Squad’s Only Black Cheerleader Over Her Braids

Kemirah Jn-Marie, a student at Ross S. Sterling High School in Baytown, Texas, says that she’s getting hassled by her varsity cheerleading coach over her hairstyle. Jn-Marie also happens to be the only black cheerleader on the team, which complicates the situation. The 15-year-old says that knowing how stringent the cheer requirements were, she specifically got the braids done so her hair would not be an issue. Sadly, Jn-Marie says that her efforts were all in vain.

According to ABC 13 Eyewitness News, the coach told Jn-Marie she would not be able to cheer with the braids in her hair. The hairstyle requirements for the cheer team are that the hair be pulled back into a ponytail and doesn’t cause a distraction — though they do say that school administrators are free to discern what is and isn’t distraction. Braids are not mentioned as one of the no-no hairstyles.

Jn-Marie’s mother feels that the coach’s persnickety attitude toward her daughter’s hair comes from a place where a lot of negative attitudes about black hair occur. But a representative from the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District says that Jn-Marie is being treated with as much scrutiny as other cheerleaders have faced in the past. “This student is not the only cheerleader who has been asked to correct her hairstyle or other parts of her uniform; further, she was in no way reprimanded, punished or kept from participating — she was simply reminded to use the agreed-upon hairstyle,” said Beth Dombrowa, Director of Communications for Goose Creek school district. “In no way do we discriminate, or tolerate, discrimination of any student.” Jn-Marie was permitted to cheer on Saturday.

Still, it is curious that something as simple as braids would be the cause of such drama. As far as what the rules say, braids aren’t a violation, unless a school administrator decides they are. But one must wonder how an administrator comes to this conclusion. What makes braids pulled back into a ponytail more distracting than a ponytail on someone whose hair naturally falls downward? If the hair isn’t stopping you from doing what is required, what is the issue? Allyson Felix won two gold medals and a silver one at the Olympics this year — all with beautiful braids in her hair. If she can achieve such a feat on an international stage, then surely Jn-Marie should be fine to tumble and cheer as normal. And she did. It seems that the only distraction here were the coach’s personal feelings about her hair.

We keep hearing of these cases of black women and girls in school or in the workplace, where they are scrutinized for wearing traditionally black hairstyles. When was the last time you heard of a school telling a young black girl to change her chemically relaxed hair because it was “distracting?” Yet teenage girls in South Africa are currently fighting for the right to wear their natural Afros in school. A then-12-year-old girl in Florida was told not to wear her Afro because it was “distracting.” A Kentucky high school had to make some changes after a backlash against its dress code that banned dreadlocks, cornrows, Afros, twists and more black hairstyles because the school deemed them “distracting.” An Oklahoma school had to revise its policy that read “hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros and other faddish styles are unacceptable.” This notion, rooted in slavery, is so poisonous that it has even brainwashed other black people into adopting the same poor attitudes about their own natural hair.

These hairstyles are not fads, they’re not distracting, and they’re not “extreme.” They are hairstyles that black people have been wearing for centuries. And it should not be a problem for anyone to see black women and men embracing their own standards of beauty and grooming — unless, of course, you have a problem with black people loving themselves at all. If that simple fact is a distraction, is because of you.

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