Hampton Steps on Cultural Nerve
With No-Braids Policy
Hampton University stepped hard on a cultural nerve when news of the
no-braids, no-dreads policy for males in the five-year M.B.A. program leaked out earlier this year. Officials at the university appear to have been blindsided by the negative reactions. “We’ve had this policy in place for six years,” says university spokeswoman Yuri Milligan with a note of bewilderment.
Outrage came in waves, spurred on when a chiding letter to Hampton president William Harvey, from Susan Taylor, editorial director of Essence Communications Inc., began circulating the Internet.
The school tried to “quiet down” each wave of criticism, but “finally, we had to go on CNN,” to try and calm the storm, says business school dean Dr. Sidney Credle.
But while that strategy may have worked, the surf could get choppy again at any moment because what Hampton officials don’t seem to have fully realized is that by targeting hair they have cracked open the crypt and exhumed the corpse of a collective childhood trauma that haunts the deepest, darkest corners of the African-American psyche.
That trauma centers around the burning shame associated with the label “bad hair.”
