Your Hair Isn’t Appropriate, This Is too Tight: How Are African American Girls being Targeted in United State School Dress Code Policies?

The purpose of this research is to examine how the United States school systems uses contemporary policies and dress codes in attempt to increase discipline and academic performance. In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court passed a law that implemented school dress code policies due to the Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent School District. The present research analyzes how dress code policies in Guilford County school systems effect students differently according to gender and race. We will investigate how the dress code policies are used as a notion of control by specifically observing how these policies are targeting African American girls by not considering their culture and somatotype