DeAndre Arnold’s dreadlocks are not a fashion statement or a teenage gesture of defiance. They are a connection to his Trinidadian heritage, a symbol of pride in who he is and where his family comes from.

For the high school senior, as for many black people, hair is an integral part of identity.

But right before winter break, the Barbers Hill High School principal told DeAndre and his mother that the teenager would face in-school suspension and be banned from walking in his graduation ceremony unless he cut his hair.

The incident set off a firestorm on social media. Houston Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins tweeted support: “Never cut your locks Deandre Arnold.” So did actress Gabrielle Union, who exhorted: “KEEP FIGHTING!!! They truly believe if you stay quiet, they've won. Don't be quiet. Do not let this stand.”

DeAndre has since withdrawn from Barbers Hill ISD and enrolled in another school, the family told Fox 26, but the case illustrates how school dress policies, workplace regulations, and everyday interactions unfairly penalize black people for styles that are associated with culture and heritage.

Last week, a second Pearland ISD student, who said school officials used a permanent marker in 2017 to fill in a design on his fade haircut, joined a federal lawsuit against the district. Last year, two black teenagers said they were denied jobs at Six Flags Over Texas because of their hairstyles.

In a suburban New Orleans Catholic school, a video showing a sixth-grader in tears because of a policy banning hair extensions led to a lawsuit and public outcry. The lawsuit was dropped after the policy was rescinded.

“Whether it’s hair discrimination or other forms of barriers, these are proxies employed to limit the mobility of black people in public spaces,” said Patricia Okonta, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “They really strike at the freedom and dignity of black people and they maintain this myth of white supremacy.”

On the surface, such policies don’t seem directed at specific races or ethnicities, Okonta told the editorial board, “but in practice, they profile a black person or person of color based on characteristics associated with them.”

Take a look, for example, at school dress codes. A 2018 National Women’s Law Center report found that policies dictating student clothing and hair styles disproportionately target girls of color, leading to increased rates of suspension and feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

In Barbers Hill ISD, about an hour east of Houston, district officials contend that the discipline handed out to DeAndre was due to the length of his hair, not the dreadlocks. The dress code policy states that boys’ hair must be above the collar, earlobes and eyes.

DeAndre, in fact, had been wearing his hair in a bun to abide by that policy.

Superintendent Greg Poole further defended the district policy by conflating hair style with high expectations.

“BH has received scrutiny regarding our high level of expectations on all things & dress code,” Poole tweeted. “Yet our African American students beat the state average on passing STAR by 22% & our overall passing scores are the highest in the state. Sounds like high expectations work!”

As Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., asked the Barbers Hill superintendent in a tweet: “How is the length of locks connected to ‘high expectations?’ ”

Actually, meting out suspensions for dreadlocks, hair extensions, corn rows and other traditionally black hairstyles hurts academic performance by robbing students of valuable instructional time.

“My hair has nothing to do with my ‘excellence,’ as we say in Barbers Hill,” DeAndre, an A and B student, told KHOU-11. “How smart I am, what job I’m going to get — my hair doesn’t determine that. I determine that for my character.”

Instead of defending the policy, Barbers Hill officials should be examining how the current guidelines impact black students, who make up about 3 percent of the student body.

That would put the district in line with a growing movement across the country to discard dress codes that unfairly single out black people and other racial and ethnic groups. In 2017, the U.S. Army revised a directive to allow dreadlocks, something black female soldiers had sought for years.

In Houston, following the death of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal, the police department changed its policy to allow religious minorities to wear clothes central to their faith.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has also introduced the CROWN Act (Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair), that would ban workplace discrimination based on hair textures and hair styles. Similar legislation has also been passed in several counties and states, including Maryland, New Jersey and New York. An additional 20 states are considering similar bills.

Texas must join those ranks and outlaw the policing of black hair. There should be no place in our schools or workplaces for discrimination disguised as a dress code.