Petition wants Jamaican apex court ruling allowing schools to ban dreadlocks overturned, slams white supremacy
A petition has been launched, seeking to overturn a Jamaican Supreme Court ruling, which states that a school was within its rights to demand a five-year-old-girl cut her dreadlocks in order to remain at school. The petition demands that the ruling be overturned, and, if necessary, that the constitution itself "be reviewed and amended if necessary."
The court's ruling comes after a two-year legal battle involving the girl's parents, Dale and Sherine Virgo, and Kensington Primary School, Portmore. According to the family's lawyer, Isat Buchanan, the family intends to appeal the case. Both parents wear dreadlocks themselves, and the order has been seen by many as an attack on Rastafarian and Black culture.
“I will not be cutting my daughter’s hair,” Sherine Virgo said immediately after the ruling, according to the Washington Post. “If they give me that ultimatum again, I will be moving her.” Dale Virgo as added, "This is an opportunity the Jamaican government and the legal system had to right these wrongs and lead the world and make a change. But they have decided to keep the same system."
According to the petition, the ruling is just the start of schools across Jamaica being able to ban students from attendance if they come in wearing dreadlocks. "This ruling sets a national precedent that can allow schools to bar students from coming in if they have locs as well," writes Bushman Adami, who started the petition. "For too long, our identity, anatomy and characteristics have been deemed as 'untidy,' 'unprofessional', 'inappropriate' and 'unsuitable' for public and private spaces, while the characteristics of non-black people are considered just fine, even if our very same features are present within their characteristics. It is decisions like these made by our so-called "leaders" in power that allow white supremacy to thrive even in black nations like ours."
The petition appeals to Andrew Holness, the Jamaican government, the Ministry of Justice, and the Supreme Court. The petition was launched on August 1, which is celebrated as Emancipation Day, for marking the end of Slavery across the British Empire on August 1st, 1834. "...we are asking with this petition for the ruling of the high court to be overturned and for the constitution to be reviewed and amended if necessary so we never have to contemplate our own identity on another Emancipation Day ever again," writes Adami.
The petition calls out the hypocrisy of Rastafarian culture, most popularly exemplified by Bob Marley, being used by the Jamaican government to promote tourism in the country, while at the same time, "a little black girl can't even wear her natural hair to school without being sent home." The Kensington Primary School claims that it required the girl - who is only named "Z" in official court documents due to being a minor - to cut off her dreadlocks due to "hygiene." However, many feel like the order is an erasure of black culture, and are fighting back against it.
At the time of writing this article, the petition has over 12,800 signatures.