"That's definitely the off-setter of our differences compared to our peers in school," Beauchamp-Pope said. "The touching of the hair without asking is probably Number One, but also the weird questions that assimilate us, marginalize us and make us feel like outsiders when our hair is really just a little more textured."
Patrick Suemnick, who graduated last year from Denmark High School, said he's constantly had to educate his peers on what he wears at night to keep his hair moisturized and from breaking off while sleeping.
"I have to tell them it's a durag, it's a bonnet, it's a headscarf," he explains. "They don't know the same things as maybe a diverse area would. It's nothing against them, but it is true that people look at you a little different and they might confront you a little differently, too."
Other Black residents of northeast Wisconsin share similar experiences — showing that even after the chains of slavery were broken, the policing of Black bodies has continued. Often, these everyday microaggressions focus on hairstyles.Black women are 1.5 times more likely to be sent home from work because of their hair, and they are 80% more likely to say they have to change their hair from its natural curly state to fit in at the office, according to a study cited by the CROWN Coalition, which advocates for legislation to ban race-based hair discrimination.
Such advocates point out that dress codes, designed to make everyone look uniform, sometimes force Blacks to conform to white European standards of beauty when it comes to hair.
News stories have documented how children all over America have been discriminated against at school, having to cut their dreads to wrestle, having to sit out of picture day because of a hairstyle, not being able to walk across the stage at graduation — the list is long.It's not just dress codes and discriminatory authorities that pressure Blacks to change their appearance and conform. Peers play a role, too.
Seventeen-year-old Saadiqah Gardner grew up in Michigan where she went to an all-white school until moving to Wisconsin in 2019. She graduated this year from Ashwaubenon High School.
"Being the only colored kid really took a toll on how I viewed myself," she said.
She wanted to have hair like the other girls in middle school so badly she asked her mom if she could get a perm, using chemicals to permanently straighten her natural curls.
"She refused to get my hair permanently straightened," she said. "Which I'm so thankful for, I love my hair now and I'm so happy she never let me damage it like that."
UW-Oshkosh senior Brandon Dudley, 20, said he loves to switch up his hairstyle whether by dyeing, braiding, twisting or wearing his natural curls. But he felt unable to fully express himself when he was a server at the Pancake Place as a student at Green Bay West High School.
