School Hair Codes, Colonial Respectability, And Caribbean Rights with amílcar peter sanatan

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A school bans “edges,” a graduation blocks braids, a child with locks is told to stay home—on the surface, they’re dress code debates. Look closer and you see a lineage of power: colonial respectability, “imperial cleanliness,” and the policing of Black and Brown bodies through hair. We sit down with artist, educator, and gender rights advocate amilcar sanatan to map how grooming rules took root, why they persist, and what it takes to change them without sacrificing learning or dignity. 

We unpack the language of “neat,” “professional,” and “acceptable,” tracing it from plantation hierarchies to modern handbooks. Together, we connect scholarship and lived experience—Rastafari resistance and the Coral Gardens legacy, the gendered training of girls into silence and boys into “tidiness,” and the quiet violence of sending students home over texture or style. Along the way, we explore key legal and cultural flashpoints from Trinidad and Tobago’s school hair code to Jamaica’s Kensington Primary case, and why each decision matters for access to education, equal employment, and human rights.

This conversation doesn’t stop at critique. We highlight grassroots wins and everyday acts of repair: natural hair days led by young teachers, principals revising codes to center hygiene and safety rather than assimilation, and families rethinking what professionalism looks like in Caribbean contexts. The goal isn’t disorder—it’s dignity. Keep students in class. Measure readiness by curiosity and conduct, not curls. Celebrate cultural expression while maintaining clear, fair standards that actually support learning. If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for more Caribbean history and culture, and leave a review telling us how grooming rules shaped your school or workplace. Your stories move this work forward.

amílcar peter sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator and activist. He is from Trinidad and Tobago and currently working between East Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Helsinki, Finland. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: About Kingston (Peekash Press) and The Black Flâneur: Diary of Dizain Poems, Anthropology of Hurt (Ethel Zine & Micro Press). 

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