No doubt you’ve seen the story circulating where a young wrestler, Andrew Johnson, was forced to cut his dreadlocks (which were short, tidy, and tucked, by the way) in order to compete in a wrestling tournament.

The mother of a New Jersey high school wrestler said she was devastated when a referee with an allegedly racist past forced her son to get his dreadlocks hacked off to compete in a match.

“Hardest thing I’ve ever seen,” wrote Rose Santiago-Johnson, the mother of Buena Regional HS junior Andrew Johnson, on Facebook. “He is good now … but that was brutal emotionally and physically.” – New York Post Article

Today, I am not focusing on the referee, because he is obviously racially motivated to chop that child’s hair. I’m focusing on the other white people in the room, the white woman who cut his hair, and the white people who failed to ally around this child.

1. No one realized how racist this was and stopped it. Not the coach, not a trainer, not another parent. This revealed ignorance and lack of understanding that you just, simply, should never do this. And no one thought about how damaging and horrible it was.
2. A white woman chopped his hair. I don’t care if the white woman is his mother, his aunt, his best friend. White women love to complain about inequality, injustice, sexism. We know how it feels to have others in power push their will, their ideals, their beauty standard upon us. We are forced to do things we don’t want to do. We are pressured ourselves to conform. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want white women to think for a minute I am equating our suffering to that of black America. But we like to cry foul as if we have suffered as much, but we will scalp a black child without batting an eye to the irony. This white woman defines the ignorance of our demographic.
3. This child was alone. In a room full of adults, every white person in this room told him that he didn’t belong. It hadn’t a thing to do with hair. A referee looked at that child and wanted to inflict something terrible, and everyone went along with the racist charade. This child was told his hair, his very person, was not good enough, and rather than warning him, they forced him to cut his hair in front of everyone else. Everyone took a white man’s word over his. Everyone took the white man’s rule over this black child. There is no reason his dreads needed to be cut. It’s a high school wrestling tournament. Something that was supposed to be athletic and a highlight for this child turned into a racist spectacle and a way for a power hungry white man to inflict his will and law upon children.

Every white person in the room, everyone in the school system, is to blame for the environment that led to this. This child has no allies in this school. No one thought for a moment how fundamentally wrong it was to take away this child’s hair, his identity, and who he is.

The referee? He is just a part of the racist machine that was in motion in that room.