THREAD: Because I think some of us who would otherwise find common ground are kinda talking past each other on this hair and anti-Blackness business.

It is not my style to opine on the specific legal issues raised in a case until I have read the actual judgment myself. /1

As such, in the Kensington matter specifically, I don't yet have an opinion on the soundness of the ruling because I haven't had sight of the written judgment. But here is the rub, mi neva baan a law school ennuh. I am not just a lawyer; I have concerns beyond the narrow /2

confines of what happens in court and what you can prove/disprove within the particular rules which govern that space. As a lawyer, I am oath bound to respect those rules and to be careful what I say particularly if mi no read the actual judgment yet. /3

But once more, being a lawyer doesn't mean that there is nothing I can observe about the wider implications of an issue beyond what transpired in court in a specific case. Prof. Hutton (who is not a lawyer) did just this in his interview with @djmillerJA this evening. /4

The judges may well have got it completely right as a matter of law in the Kensington case but arguing that we should wait to see whether it was established that the school rule (or alleged school rule) in question in fact technically banned locs or whether or not the kid /5

in question actually had locked hair etc, doesn't really disturb the point Prof. Hutton was making about anti-Blackness in our society. The professor wasn't making a legal argument and neither am I. Our simple proposition is that lots of Jamaican schools have enacted grooming /6

rules that are anti-Black in both their intent and application. These types of rules along with other expressions of anti-Blackness are consequences of our history as a slave plantation colony within the British Empire. Whoo boy have we held on to some nasty elements of /7

this sordid shameful history! Prof. Hutton's point is that it is high time we jettison these racist rules and that since doing so is not beyond us, it's kinda shameful that we haven't. These are perfectly reasonable observations to make even before one reads a single paragraph /8

of the written ruling in the Kensington case. /End