ARP Tuesday Links
Houston-area school bars boy for adhering to Native American cultural practice:
FORT BEND COUNTY (KTRK) — The parents of a kindergartener in Fort Bend County are fighting for his right to have long hair in school. They say it’s about freedom of religion. The Needville Independent School District says it needs proof.
When Adriel Arocha, 5, was born, his father, Kenney, vowed to teach him his heritage.
“We feel that it’s important to raise him as Native American until he’s able to make a choice,” said Kenny.
And part of that heritage meant he would not cut his son’s hair, believing hair holds spiritual meaning. Read more…
The Times They Are A-Changin’ in Nantucket:
NANTUCKET - Hydrangeas still bloom beside cedar-shingle homes, and yachts continue to bob beyond private beaches, but this old preserve of the rich and primped is undergoing a change unlike anything it has witnessed in the centuries since English explorers established the island as a whaling port.
In the Nantucket School District, where a decade ago more than 95 percent of the students were white, 25 percent of this year’s nearly 1,300 students are members of a minority group and 10 percent grew up speaking another language.
And then there is the Rev. Donovan Kerr’s growing New Life Ministries church, which on Sundays attracts as many as 150 congregants, nearly all of them black or Hispanic.
“We represent the other side of Nantucket,” said Kerr, who founded his ministry six years ago with six congregants and recently bought land to build a church. “We represent the changes.” Read more…
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
tenniec wrote:
while i understand that this might seem like an issue of race, i think that that is only because his religion is tied up in his heritage. as a student of religion, i get very upset and frustrated that this family needs to prove that they are part of a”recognized religion … that discusses they cannot cut their hair”. religion is so much more than just a recognition, by.. who exactly? who is the official source on recognizing religion? who says one is valid, and the other fabricated? that’s tricky. i’m sure many of you know that there are many different POVs on what religion is (my personal favorite being that religion=society, by durkheim. we also have religion=illusion, by freud) so who can say what a religion is and what it is not- 20 different anthropologists/sociologists will say 20 different explanations.
Posted 29 Jul 2008 at 10:00 pm ¶
L&N's Mom wrote:
on the Nantucket article - I live just outside of Boston, and was on Martha’s Vineyard for a day while on vacation. What’s amazing is that these two islands are right next to each other but have a totally different feel. MV is so different where the race mix is higher than that in many towns on the mainland. So much that we considered getting married on MV. But then - who can aford that?
Nantucket has the reputation of being “for snobs and yuppies” I do not disagree, which is why I prefer MV - just steer the boat to the left….
Posted 31 Jul 2008 at 9:19 am ¶
BedStuyMama wrote:
The issue of long hair - It should not matter the race of the child at all. If it is his parent’s choice to have him wear his hair long, if the child does not object, why should anyone else? I really just don’t understand what the problem is. Now, if the child is in class becoming distracted by his hair in some way (I’m not sure how that would happen) then the school may request that he wear his hair up or away from his face during school hours. Other than that, this is a load of you know what.
Posted 02 Aug 2008 at 2:57 pm ¶
Erika Shira wrote:
The policy is just inappropriate. There’s an element of racial discrimination in stating that male children need to have short hair — this hairstyle is only synonymous with “clean” and “formal” in the context Caucasian-American culture, and even that’s a stretch. Probably more accurate to say “middle-America-white-protestant culture.” There’s also sex discrimination inherent in having separate dress codes for males and females, though a lot of cases using this argument have been lost due to homophobia/transphobia on the part of judges and juries. And yes, there’s the religious element that the parents are bringing up; case law demonstrates that religious beliefs don’t need to be part of an organized Western religion in order to fall under the first amendment. They just need to be consistently practiced and held by a number of people. Others have successfully argued freedom of religion regarding vegetarianism and so forth; it seems that Native American practices are even more clearly a religious belief. The family should easily win in court, but it’s aggravating to me that they would even need to go to court over this.
Posted 12 Aug 2008 at 9:44 am ¶