Minnesota mothers are demanding answers after their 12-year-old Black son’s hair was cut off by a teacher last week without their permission.
Yesterday (April 18), Daetney McReynolds appeared on her local CBS affiliate’s station, WCCO 4, to discuss what happened to her child. Because he is a minor, the station withheld his identity.
“It was actually growing pretty well. He was thinking about all the kinds of styles he wanted to do with it,” McReynolds said as she described her son’s afro.
The boy’s parents were “shocked” and blindsided as he returned home from school as no officials had notified them of the incident.
“Are you guys going to be mad?” the boy asked once at home. When his parents asked him why they would be angry, that is when the child removed his hat to reveal an uneven and unauthorized haircut.
“My teacher and me cut my hair,” the boy said.
After pressing the issue of how this situation occurred, the child told his parents that he had been upset about his hair. He went on to say that he didn’t like his “lining.” That’s when the teacher — whose identity has also been withheld — grabbed some scissors and began to cut the boy’s hair off, offering to “fix it.”
The boy’s mother Tadow McReynolds did not understand why she nor her wife were notified. Tadow asked, “What made her think that this is OK? If you were going to help my child why wouldn’t you do it the proper way, [the] common-sense way, the helpful way? By getting him some real help?”
The McReynolds shared photos and videos online and say that their “village” came to their rescue.
William Baker — an on-air personality at KMOJ Radio — told WCCO 4 that in the Black community, a person’s hair is their crown.
“It just demoralized him, just take his pride away. And now his hair is being put in a situation where people are dictating how he should look,” Baker said of the situation.
The radio host reached out to Barber Big Lew who showed up with his mobile barber business and fixed the boy’s haircut in time for him to get a fresh start at a new school.