Seven years ago, I wrote a column about an 11-year-old Black girl who was turned away from her Catholic elementary school near New Orleans because she showed up with her hair braided with extensions. About halfway through, I included what I believed to be an unobjectionable statement: “As black people’s hair is generally different from white people’s, any hair policy needs to be carefully considered lest it make some students vulnerable to breaking a rule that others couldn’t conceivably break.”
A reader responded with a comment that was completely out of right field, but still illuminating: “What if Donald Trump said this: ‘As black people’s hair is generally different from white people’s,’ would a column be forthcoming about [him] making racist divisive remarks?”
The reflects an opinion that mentioning race is inherently problematic and that acknowledging racial differences is necessarily racist.
But Black people’s hair is generally different from white people’s. That’s a fact. The reader’s comment has stayed with me because it reflects an opinion held by far too many conservative white people, including those in this second Trump administration: that mentioning race is inherently problematic and that acknowledging racial differences is racist.
But when you don’t acknowledge that people are different you get outrages such as the “interim guidance” announced by the Marines this month: Marines who have pseudofolliculitis barbae (the fancy name for razor bumps) can now be “separated” (that is, discharged) if it isn’t resolved in a year’s time.
As much as I love the idea of shaving my face with a razor, I almost never do because the hair that grows back in invariably curls into my skin and causes painful bumps. And then you can’t shave without slicing into those bumps. Anybody who shaves can get razor bumps, but the American College of Osteopathic Dermatology says that pseudofolliculitis barbae occurs in up to 60% of African American men. An article in American Family Physician says the incidence is as high as 85%.
A military dermatologist who spoke to Military.com said Black service members are about 15% of active-duty military but “66% of shaving waiver holders are Black.”
The Marines claims the interim guidance is about upholding “standards of readiness, discipline and lethality,” but “separating” men with razor bumps would seem guaranteed to make the Marines weaker, not stronger.
In July 2021, the Journal of Military Medicine published a study that found “a significant association between shaving waivers and delays in promotion.” In October 2021, two dermatologists on active duty in the Air Force, wrote a letter to the Air Force Times in response. “Contrary to the belief of some, PFB is often not manageable with anything other than a shaving profile allowing for just a short amount of hair growth,” wrote Lt. Col. Simon Ritchie and Lt. Col. Thomas Beachkofsky. “The notion that these members simply need to learn how to shave the right way is factually incorrect and contradicts what we, as dermatologists, know about this condition.”
It’s bad enough that Black service members have been denied promotions because close shaves are bad for them. It’s infinitely worse that the Marines is considering kicking out people with razor bumps.
But these are the types of policies you get when you hold the naïve and factually incorrect position that we are all the same and that one-size-fits-all policies are inherently fair.
There’s a framework that helps leaders of organizations think through policies that might seem fair and neutral on their face but result in some people in an organization having advantages or disadvantages that others don’t. That framework is known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which has been maligned and effectively outlawed by Trump’s administration.
Perhaps you’ve climbed aboard the anti-DEI train yourself, but if you think that it would be wrong and self-defeating for the military to kick out Marines who have faithfully served and protected our nation solely because their facial hair curls into their skin, then yours is a pro-DEI opinion.
The Trump administration is treating race (and sexual orientation and gender) as something not to be mentioned.
Like the person in the comments section of the 2018 column I wrote, the Trump administration is treating race (and sexual orientation and gender) as something not to be mentioned. I don’t believe the people in the Trump administration are naïve; I believe that in the main, their motivations are quite sinister. But their anti-DEI positions appeal to people who hold the simplistic view that everybody’s the same, believe that treating everybody the same is always right and believe that if we don’t acknowledge our differences then we’re bound to live happily ever after.
Since Trump has taken office, we’ve seen the Air Force temporarily remove a training video about the heroic Tuskegee Airmen, we’ve seen the Department of Defense disparagingly add the letters DEI to the URL of a webpage celebrating Army Maj. Gen. Charles Gavin Rogers’ Medal of Honor and temporarily remove the page celebrating Jackie Robinson’s service as a second lieutenant in the Army. Three years before Robinson broke MLB’s color line, he was wrongly court martialed — and ultimately acquitted — after refusing to sit in the back of a bus on an Army base.
If you think that talking about race is bad on its face, or that acknowledging the racism that Black people have endured in the military is bad on its face, then attempts at erasure such as these are inevitable.
And in a more literal sense, a policy that kicks out men with razor bumps will be an erasure.
We’re not all the same. And the Marine’s “interim guidance” is racist because it suggests that we are.
