Again… the outcome matters. So yes, it’s a tool of discrimination if it’s USED for discrimination… 
I’m not sure why that’s controversial.
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Even if it wasn’t (which it is) it’s none of their fucking business how a kid has their hair cut.
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Not to mention putting the onus on the victim, rather than the oppressor – “We don’t know…”
Sowing seeds of doubt is a common tool, also.
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It’s both.
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Kind of ironic really that you’d spend time here (needlessly) splitting hairs like that.
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i think the question is: why does the school continue to uphold a manifestly racist policy towards hair?
since there’s no practical reason for their rules, there’s really only one answer. it’s racism.
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… the question was, literally, “how is the racist decision racist”
not “yeah but it’s not really racist racist”
That’s not actually a question 
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If the dress code is written in such a way that people of some given physical characteristics will have more difficulty obeying it than others, then it’s discriminatory. (For example, if you are required to wear a certain cut of jacket which interferes with your crutches or wheelchair, or if you are required to wear an item of clothing which is not made in your size.)
If those physical characteristics are the result of ancestry or descent, then those codes are racist. You might claim that everyone is held to the same standard, but it is an arbitrary standard that some people have difficulty meeting because of characteristics they can’t change. This kid’s hair is different from the hair of someone descended only from north-east-Europeans, and has different requirements to keep it healthy and manageable.
Now, you might claim that there is leeway in applying the rules or not: and this is a bullshit argument. Because if there is the option of applying the racist rule, there is the threat of having the racist rule applied, which in this case has been carried out. If the rule exists, that is the problem, whether it is applied or not, it remains as a sword of Damocles over some students’ head, but not others’.
Why has it been carried out? I fail to see how it matters, really. The result is that black people have been put on notice that they aren’t welcome there, and they have to jump through extra hoops to avoid being threatened with things that their classmates don’t have to even know might be a problem. Whether it’s to use his race to punish him for something else, or whether it’s pour encourager les autres, it’s a racist rule, being selectively applied in a racist manner, racistly.
This is not a uniquely American problem. That’s because systemic racism is everywhere.
Please stop excusing or minimising it.
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This! In this case, whiteness is the “normantive” quality that they are seeking to enforce… They take white characteristics as a standard of normal and expect everyone else to contort themselves to fit it…
Very eloquently put!
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Well well well:
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