By Aswad Walker
If you’re reading this, chances are you already know the gist of the Barbers Hill / Darryl George tragedy. I call it a tragedy because for grown-a “humans” in positions of authority and power to demonize a Black youth for being culturally open enough to rock his natural doo is unconscionable and, dare I say, criminal.
Backstory
If you’re new to this, here is a quick summary: Greg Poole, the white superintendent of a darn near lily-white school district (Barbers Hill) felt the need to “caucasticly” police Black hair, specifically the hair of George, an 18-year-old junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, just outside of Houston.
It should also be pointed out that George’s suspension was issued after Texas passed the CROWN Act in September 2023, making it illegal for schools, businesses, etc. to discriminate against people for their natural hairstyle.
But that didn’t stop Poole from making an example out of George for… well, it’s really hard to find a logical reason for Poole’s punitive actions.
After being suspended for a “failure to comply” and sent to an alternative school (from Oct. 12 to Nov. 29), George returned to Barbers Hill unapologetic about wearing his hair the way it grew out of his head – in its natural but well-coiffered state – no hair beneath the imaginary line of sin (a line cross by countless Barbers Hill white students, mind you). Still, George was immediately suspended again – this time for 13 days. Again, for a “failure to comply.”
In December, George’s family filed a formal complaint with the Texas Education Agency, as well as a federal civil rights lawsuit against Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the school district for violating the state’s CROWN ACT. In other words, George and family contend the real injustice here is Poole and company’s “failure to comply” with state law.
Attack Ad
Yet, instead of conforming to state law, Poole went full Caucus Mountains, defending the school district’s position to repeatedly suspend George by taking out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle, which had to cost him a pretty penny.
Not only that, Poole made what might be the whitest statement in 50 years (which is saying something), when he said, “Being an American requires conformity.”
Really, playa?
What American requirements are you reading from?
America Founded on Non-Conformity
This nation was literally founded on non-conformity. The colonists refused to conform to “taxation without representation” and religious restrictions (fairy tale version) or Britain’s desires to get out of the slavery game (a more accurate read of history). They chose war with their mother country rather than conform to a world without the stolen labor and intellectual/skills genius of enslaved botanists, mathematicians, engineers, philosophers, warriors, etc. from Africa.
Poole may have used the word “conformity,” but he and his ilk have always meant “submission.”
“Conformity” means everyone in society is going to comply to a set of agreed upon standards. In other words, there are rules we’re all going to follow; practices we’re all going to engage in; standards we’re all going to adhere to.
But the history of this nation has been whites paternalistically setting standards for everyone but themselves. They demand that we “conform” while they go off doing whatever the hell they want.
Trifecta of Non-Conformity
Democracy was cool with Poole’s “Americans” when the majority said slavery was legal and segregation was God’s will. But as soon as “we the people” started voting for a more pluralistic society, rejecting “Make America White Again” initiatives… oh, then democracy was the problem. Democracy needed to be thrown out with Black people’s Election 2020 votes. Whiteworld said to hell with democracy. They refuse to conform to their own constitution, their own form of government by the people, for the people.
Same with Christianity. As long as white evangelicals could define what Christianity was or wasn’t, whites conformed and expected everyone else to, as well. As they preached “Slave, be obedient to your master” on the plantation, or preached “Segregation now, segregation forever” during the 60s, or preached of the godly virtues of the KKK and other white domestic terrorists from the late 1800s to today, or preached that Jesus was some other-worldly, apolitical flower child who viewed protests against the state as the greatest sin, white Christians conformed to the faith, and expected us to do the same.
But as Christianity breaks free from its Eurocentric colonization, and people of all races begin recognizing the liberating messages and focus on caring for the poor and opening our doors and hearts to the immigrants, now white Christians are literally revolting against their own faith. They’ve started a whole anti-“Red Letter” Christianity, rejecting the words and directives of Jesus, which are, in many versions of the Bible, written in red.
White pastors are complaining that their white congregants are revolting against Jesus’s actual words and directives, saying they refuse to comply with all that love your neighbor as yourself jive. They refuse to conform to a Messiah that calls for believers to care for the sick and free the oppressed. They want a white nationalist NRA Jesus who shoots first and asks questions later. So, again, they refuse to conform.
The same is true in the realm of “law and order.” They love it when “law and order” over-polices and over-incarcerates Blackfolk. But the second the law holds them accountable, they’re the loudest ones screaming “defund the police.”
They Want Submission
Whether Poole consciously knew it or not, when he demanded conformity from Darryl George, he was really calling for “submission,” “the act of accepting or yielding to the will or authority of a superior force.” Submission to whiteness.
Poole took out a full-page ad in a major media publication to scream a message that has been battering Black people since we’ve been in this Babylon – Resistance is futile; submit to the “supremacy” of white definitions, rules, laws, etc. Whether whitefolk follow those rules or not is immaterial.
Resistance is Our Middle Name
Thankfully, George is surrounded by a support system that has his back and is willing to fight for his right to honor who he is culturally and spiritually, and thereby, also to honor his/our ancestors. By not conforming to edicts that wreak of the myth of white supremacy, George is showing way more maturity than that childish move by a grown-A bully who used a full-page ad to spread his Cromagnon message of paternalistic, god-complex hate.
Moreover, George is displaying something that has been part of our Pan-African story since the first colonizers sought to enslave us – the spirit of resistance, the spirit of non-compliance with evil, the spirit of non-conformity to edicts meant to put us in any place that is not a place of honor and dignity and power.
We would do well to exhibit just an ounce of what George and family are bringing to the table. If we’re going to conform to anything, let it be the divine power present in us that demands we let our divine light shine for all the world to see – in however we rock our hair!
