As you enter the school you see signs that state, “Please Remove Your Hat” and “We Are a Hat-Free School.” Yet a Black student came to class wearing a durag. I spoke with my administrator regarding the incident to say that I did not want him to feel as though I was racially profiling him but I was worried perhaps another staff member would uphold the tradition of the hat rule. I was told to email home and ask if the durag was a cultural piece. I came back to my administrator later that day to say I was feeling uncomfortable as a white educator questioning the culture of a Black family. She agreed, and we discussed that if we discarded the no-hat-rule there would be no question about whether or not a student’s dress was cultural, and therefore an exemption to the age-old rule.
Slavery, Colonialism and White Supremacy
In many global health institutions, the positions of power and leadership are most often occupied by White people. The underlying assumption is that White…