Dress codes are pretty commonly accepted as part of attending school. When it comes to dress codes making the news, it’s usually because of sexism. A judge literally had to rule, for example, that refusing to let girls wear shorts or pants violated the Constitution. The instance of a student being sent home because her T-shirt condemned homophobia continues to boggle the mind, and dress codes can be weaponized against black students especially. The latest story to come out of Virginia, however, spins in a whole new direction—and not a good one: The Franklin County School District voted 7-1 not to ban clothing with the Confederate flag in the school’s dress code, as reported by The Roanoke Times.
Penny Blue, the only black member of the board, rightly argued that the Confederate flag is a white supremacy symbol. In fact, Blue has been arguing this for months, as she proposed to update the dress code policy with this specification in October, according to the Times. The board was originally meeting to discuss an update to the dress code, and Blue wanted the section on hate imagery and speech to be updated to reference the Confederate flag as an example. That didn’t fly with her peers, however.
“The slippery slope that I believe we are going down is that if we are too general, and every teacher and every principal has such subjectivity, and we’re not consistent, that’s the slippery slope,” she stated at the Monday, Jan. 13 meeting, before the vote occurred.
She referred to the Hardwick v. Heyward federal court decision at the same meeting, saying “You have to have your head in the sand if you don't think it is reasonable to believe wearing the Confederate flag would cause disruption in the learning school environment.”
Mark Church, the Franklin County Schools superintendent, says that he doesn’t “like” the symbol and wishes students wouldn’t wear it, as reported by WSET. However, Church, as the Times reported, referenced a Kentucky court case from 2000 as legal precedent. To sum that case up, because the school couldn’t prove a history of disruption because of the flag’s presence in the schools, they couldn’t ban it. The flag can't be banned from schools without "significant disruption to the school day,” Church told WSET.
Others on the school board referenced Tinker v. Des Moines, the famous 1969 case that ruled in favor of students wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, as reported by TODAY. This protects a student’s right to free speech and expression, even while in public schools.
All of this put another way: We can’t ban things in order to prevent someone from being hurt or offended. The problem with that logic, of course, is that actual hate symbols can and do make people upset. Hate symbols can be distracting, painful, and even triggering without necessarily leading to a fight in the classroom or someone walking off of campus. In this case, the vote suggests intent over impact; if people want to express themselves, the vote suggests, they should be able to, at least until something disruptive happens over it. Meanwhile, that logic leaves an already marginalized population between a rock and a hard place.
"When we see the Confederate flag, that tells us, 'Do not enter. We are not welcome,'" Blue told Today. "it means the n-word, rape, lynchings, all of those things. The Confederate flag is used for white supremacy."
As Newsweek notes, the Virginia county is about 87% white and 8% black. This too adds to a power imbalance and potentially makes it harder for students of color to advocate for themselves. Black students are also more likely to be suspended, expelled, or even arrested than their white peers in general. Waiting for a fight or other altercation to escalate over the flag could leave black students especially vulnerable to punishment.