Six Flags Rejected A Teenage Job Applicant, But Then He Got Sweet Revenge
It’s a fine spring day in Arlington, Texas. A young man has turned up for an interview for a job at Six Flags Over Texas. It seems a great place to get some work experience. After all, this isn’t just any amusement park: no, it’s the largest in the whole Dallas-Fort Worth area. But something happens that makes the teenager’s excitement vaporize in a moment.
Job application
Kerion Washington is a teenager with big dreams. His hope for the long term is either to forge a career in the fashion industry or become a professional athlete. And he has the looks and physique for it. Right now, though, the 17-year-old needs some summer work between school years. He’d like to get some job experience and some spending money. For Kerion, this would be his first job.
“Extreme hairstyle”
Things seem to be going well for Kerion, but then the recruiter makes a demand that surprises him. You see, Kerion, like many black men, rocks a special hairstyle. The high-school junior has dreadlocks. But Six Flags apparently does not like the look of them. In fact, it reportedly considers them an “extreme hairstyle” forbidden by its dress policy. So to get a job, he would need to lop off his locks.
Discriminatory rules
Now Kerion is not the first young black man who’s been knocked back for a job because of his hairstyle. There’s quite the history of discrimination against people of color on this basis. Some pushback is happening, though. The state of California passed the CROWN Act around the time that Kerion went for the job. It forbids schools and workplaces from discriminating against people who have hairstyles typical of particular ethnicities, including cornrows, dreadlocks, and braids.
Long history
Dreadlocks have been around for a very long time. Ethiopian Coptic priests are thought to have been wearing them in 500 B.C. And they weren’t the first: Indian holy men are mentioned as sporting such locks more than a thousand years before that. The hairstyle may even pre-date them: Egyptians were thought to have rocked dreadlocks way back in the days of the Pharaohs, and perhaps other Africans too, before historical records began.