Masks: The Next Dress Code Frontier
To mask or not to mask? That’s somehow still the question for school districts across the U.S. as they start classes this fall.
While some states, such as New York, Utah and Pennsylvania, are requiring students to wear masks, others have left school districts to decide for themselves. The result has been chaotic enforcement – for example, one immunocompromised teacher in Oklahoma is offering extra credit to his students to wear masks, while another in Tennessee bought a medical-grade air purifier, and still others have sent unmasked students home.
Some critics have compared mask requirements – with their uneven enforcement and confusing standards – to school-enforced dress codes, which are often unequally enforced in discriminatory ways.
Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, the director of educational equity and senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, has thoughts on this. Over the past two years, she’s helped edit and write reports for the center’s “Dress Coded” project, a research initiative showing how racist and sexist dress codes unfairly target Black girls in DC schools by banning styles like hair wraps.
Onyeka-Crawford has been advising schools on how to manage the new COVID-era rules, and I spoke with her about what her research tells us about the challenges of masking – and how to apply the new rules in an equitable way.
Start with values, not judgment
The point of the dress code project in DC schools, says Onyeka-Crawford, has been to foster mutual respect in the classroom. Students deserve respect from teachers and each other no matter what, and understanding and facilitating this respect makes safe learning environments possible. “I think that actually leads into this conversation about masks,” she says. “If you have respect for your peers and their health, you will put on a mask. If you lead with the values of respect and caring about your peers and caring about your community, you don’t have to convince a student to put on a mask.”
Providing help vs. cracking down
In New York City, students who refuse to wear masks in school will be sent home and barred from in-person learning, with exceptions. Onyeka-Crawford has been advising schools to be sensitive to the stress students have experienced and respond to violations with “care and support, not punitive measures … isn’t there a better middle ground, rather than taking them out [of school]?” She suggested that counseling or support to help the students who are dealing with stress and conflict during this extremely difficult time would be more useful, and a better alternative to removing them from the classroom.
Who is allowed to choose?
In regard to school dress codes, there are structural differences in how they’re applied, Onyeka-Crawford said. In schools that are majority white, “kids can come in and wear whatever they want — there aren’t uniforms,” she said. Meanwhile, “schools that are majority-Black … they’re more likely to have dress codes [or] a uniform policy, so you don’t actually get to choose what you wear to school.” Similar dynamics are playing out in the masking debate in schools, she told me. Some schools are trusting students to make a choice, while others are applying a mandate that comes with severe consequences. Onyeka-Crawford sees the dynamics as similar, and thinks that race and gender bias in these policies is an issue that should be recognized and addressed.
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