Opus DEI

It was too significant to be the very last sentence of a story below the fold on page 8 of last Friday’s newspaper. But there it was. A school superintendent quoted saying “being an American requires conformity.”

That thinking is far more twisted than the student’s hair the superintendent was objecting to. The student, a high school junior whose hair is braided and tied in locs on top of his head, was suspended for violating a Houston-area school district’s dress code prohibiting boys’ hair from extending below the shirt collar, eyebrows or earlobes.

AP file photo

That code is dubious to begin with, but its application in this instance is not only arbitrary and capricious but also un-American, seeing how this country of ours is a melting pot, a nation of close to 200 nationalities and nearly 1,500 races and ethnicities. All of us except indigenous people either came from elsewhere or have relatively recent ancestors who did.

Making conformity a condition of residence is as unnatural as it…