A White Baltimore arts executive was recently fired in September from the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. The reason was not that Kelly Carnes was chronically absent or failed to perform her duties as the new executive director. Rather, it was the hairstyle that she briefly adopted on vacation. You see, Carnes is white, and co-workers were apparently triggered by her getting cornrows while attending the Burning Man festival. It was not deemed a fun hairstyle choice adopted on a vacation but rather a despicable case of cultural appropriation that warranted her termination.
Carnes was hired on Sept. 8 and was heralded for her more than 21 years of experience in arts leadership, nonprofit strategy, communications, fundraising, and operations.
She said that she adopted cornrows as a ‘protective style’ while attending Burning Man.
We have previously discussed cultural appropriation controversies where people were triggered by cornrows, dreadlocks (and here), food (and here), costumes, big hoop earrings, yoga (and here), songs, opera, or dance styles. Businesses and universities have yielded to these attacks, curtailing a wide array of different forms of free expression in the name of cultural tolerance.
Activists have even targeted artist Bo Derek for wearing cornrows in her Movie “10.” These critics ignore that many hairstyles, like music and dance styles, began with particular cultural groups before becoming popular with general populations.
The Baltimore Rock Opera publicly stated that it knew its new executive director was spotted with cornrows and that it would immediately conduct a full investigation.
The Opera has now triggered a possible hair-raising case in which Carnes could allege racial discrimination. It would also make a novel and potentially important free speech case.
At issue may be Maryland’s CROWN Act, which protects minority employees from discrimination based on traits associated with race, such as hair texture, afro hairstyles, and protective hairstyles. The law must apply equally to all races, including hairstyles adopted by Caucasian employees.
Under the state’s discrimination laws, cornrows are clearly not a matter that would “reasonably preclude the performance of the employment.” It is an objection to the appearance of employees based on racial bias or intolerance.
In my view, this is clearly racial discrimination as well as an abridgment of free expression. This is even clearer after Maryland enacted the CROWN Act, which defines race for anti-discrimination protections to include “traits associated with race,” such as hair texture, Afro hairstyles, and protective hairstyles.
The fact that this was passed with reference to protect African American employees is not determinative. Carnes was fired because of her race and the adoption of a rule barring hairstyles on a racial basis.
Maryland said that it wanted to protect hairstyles. This may not be the litigant that they had in mind, but it is the same form of racial discrimination.
For the left, the Carnes case could be a discomforting moment of having to face racial discrimination done in the name of racial harmony or equity. At one point, the left relished hairstyle freedom as a form of free expression. That was captured in the popular musical Hair, which became a virtual national anthem for the left in the 1970s.
“Hair (hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair)
Grow it, show it
Long as I can grow it
My hairI want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratsy, matsy
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming
Flaxen, waxenKnotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled (and spaghettied!).”
While the Supreme Court has only addressed hair regulations a few times (often in the context of allowable hair regulations for military or prison settings), hairstyles are (in my view) a form of free expression.
A few lower courts have supported that view. In Breen v. Kahl, the Seventh Circuit found in 1969 that “The right to wear one’s hair at any length or in any desired manner is an ingredient of a personal freedom protected by the United States Constitution.” While the appellate court was equivocal on where this right rested between the First and Ninth Amendments, it concluded that “it clearly exists and applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
There can also be religious-clause protections for hairstyles, though that is not the case here. However, there remains good-faith debate over the extent to which hairstyles are protected in comparison to free speech.
That is why this case is more likely to be resolved on the grounds of racial discrimination. Baltimore Rock Opera’s firing of Carnes because of her race appears incontrovertible. If she were an African American, she would still be the executive director wearing cornrows. The Opera is telling employees that their hairstyles will be monitored on the basis of their race.
As Chief Justice John Roberts famously wrote, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” While he may have been thinking more about college admissions than hairstyles, it is still true that “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Carnes could make a lasting contribution to constitutional law by standing firm against this discriminatory action. Of course, it is not easy to suddenly find yourself the target of a woke mob. She no doubt feels, as observed in Richard III, that “My hair doth stand on end to hear [these] curses.” However, we are all cursed if the mob is allowed to control how we appear in public.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
We can settle this easily. Basketball was invented by a white man. From now on only white people can play basketball. This is how it works isn’t it? Crazy!
The American Founders legislated that only white persons may be citizens.
________________________________________________________________________________
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802 (four iterations for maximal clarity)
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
WordPress Censorship Here:
The American Founders legislated that only white persons may be citizens.
________________________________________________________________________________
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802 (four iterations for maximal clarity)
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
Why do you trolls waste your time here? Losers. TDS is now an official diagnosis. Bots or tards.
Estovir, when will you let me comment again?
Trump’s Damned Supplicants?
We have three related items in the news this week:
• In Tennessee, a woman awoke from unconsciousness a week after prison authorities botched her execution by lethal injection. It is not yet clear whether the state is going to try to kill her again.
• In New York City, yet another ICE agent shot yet another person in a car, this time with a 5-year-old child sitting a few feet away.
• In Washington, D.C., the White House announced that it will livestream the death by firing squad of a former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas in a radical Islamist terrorist attack. No execution in the United States has ever been filmed for public consumption.
When you think about it, all three items can be condensed into one :
• In the United States, under the current regime, state-sanctioned violence has become routine — presented publicly and arrogantly and without apology, as something to be celebrated, something of which to be proud.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exemplified the new national tone himself last year, in a speech to military brass in which he promised greater lethality and fewer bothersome restrictive rules of engagement. Speaking to career military officers familiar with the complex strategic and moral protocols of warfare, Hegseth simplified their role for them:
“You kill people and break things for a living.”
Public executions take place in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
And now the United States is joining this club.
What great company to keep.
And today Marco Rubio announced sanctions against the International Criminal Court (just after one of its justices won a Nobel Prize
ICC and Nobel fell to the commies years ago.
And I thought those countries are what you wanted us to immolation.
“Kill people and break things” has been a common phrase in military circles, at least since I was commissioned in 1985 (and probably much further back from then).
Older than the 80’s… “In war, people die and sh!t gets blown up.
When you tell only part of the story – that is called lying.
Absolutely the job of the defense department is to kill people and break things.
We spend enormous amounts of resources getting very very good at that so that:
We do not have to do it
If we ever do have to do it we are successfull, so that we do not have to live under real tyranny.
The woman was sentenced to death by a jury of her peers for heinous crimes she committed.
While her botched execution is disturbing, that has nothing to do with Trump. Whether she is still going to be executed is a legal question that the courts can sort out.
Law enforcement involves FORCE. Those in the NYC incident were violating the law. If you do not like the law – work to change it. If you expect Law enforcement to enFORCE the laws you pass, you are obligated to tolerate that they will enforce laws you do not like, until you manage to succeed in changing them – that is called the rule of law, not man. With specific respect to ICE – there are about 1M US LEOs they perform 7M arrests each year in which over 1000 people are shot. There are about 15,000 ICE officers they perform more than 1M arrests each year and less than a dozen people are shot. Arrests sometimes result in violence. In this case the person tried to use their car to Ram ICE agents. Fortunately violence in arrests is actually rare, and much MORE rare in ICE arrests.
While I have not yet seen a truly botched ICE shooting – there will be one eventually – doing something 1M times a year perfectly is not possible. But so far ICE is doing about 100 times better than ordinary law enforcement.
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
― George Washington
Everything Government does is violence or the threat of violence.
If you do not want government violence – make less laws.
Every single law ever written if vigorously resisted will ultimatelyu result in state sanctioned violence.
That is litterally what govenrment exists for. The use of violence to compell compliance.
If forced compliance is not necescary then you are outside the domain of government.
This is one of many reasons why govenrment must be limited – because government is FORCE compliance is mandatory and resistance will result in violence and the loss of life, liberty or property.
Lisa Cook Pursued On Hair Violations
President Trump on Friday said the White House had formed a committee to investigate Lisa D. Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, and would hold a hearing to consider whether to fire her over unproven accusations that she committed mortgage fraud.
The “committee of inquiry” will look into claims that Ms. Cook made “false statements in connection with one or more mortgage instruments,” the White House said in a statement. The hearing, which called for Ms. Cook’s attendance, was scheduled for Nov. 5.
In a statement on Friday, lawyers for Ms. Cook said they had “grave doubts that this ‘hearing’ is a legitimate one that would conform to the law.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/business/trump-lisa-cook-fed.html?smid=nytcore-
………………………………………….
The committee that will hear Ms. Cook’s case is composed of Mr. Trump’s aides and appointees including Kevin Hassett, his top economic adviser; Keith Sonderling, the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics; and Andrea Lucas, the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The concept for this committee seems to be an idea that Trump simply made up.
Just for clarification: Are you saying that any inquiry into whether any Federal employee made false statements in connection with any mortgage instrument is an “idea that Trump simply made up”?
Hearings are usually conducted by Congress. What’s more, no proof exists that Lisa Cook committed any crime. And how is this relevant now??
Just for clarification: Are you saying that any inquiry into whether any Federal employee made false statements in connection with any mortgage instrument is an “idea that Trump simply made up”?
Lisa Cook’s falsification of the loan document was a deliberate act. Much like a bank robber who cannot legitimately claim their crime was an accident, the execution of the act itself demonstrates clear intent.
“The statement on that specific form was a non-factual statement.”
– Gemini
Many women style their hair that way for Burning Man for exactly the reason she stated: it IS a ‘protective style’ in that environment. It is standard and highly effective in protecting damage from the alkaline dust.
By this metric Michael Jackson committed multiple capital offenses worthy of the death penalty
Dear Prof Turley,
You’re not going to make it in the Trump Administration. .. ‘no beardos, no weirdos, no trannies, no fatties’.
I didn’t know you were a fan of HAIR, the pure seminal American musical.. . let the sunshine in!
The final scene from Hair (remastered audio). The Flesh Failures/Let The Sun Shine In.
I saw a production of HAIR at the Shubert Theatre in Chicago, circa 1970. Wouldn’t trade the memory for anything.
Oh well, who would be foolish enough to work for an organization with so many landmines in place?
Sooner or later you will step on one and the mob will come for the pieces.
So, are blacks who bleach/dye their hair or straighten their hair guilty of culture appropriation?
We used to do French braids in our daughter’s hair when she was little. Cornrows are just braids. Braids have been around for thousands of years throughout the world. Braid (hairstyle) – Wikipedia.
Who would have known that Letitia James was a blonde.
https://news.ssbcrack.com/new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-faces-court-over-mortgage-fraud-charges/
https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220921115154-01-letitia-james-0908.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_833,w_1480,c_fill
Politically enshrined idiocy… why do we do permit this?
Without DNA analysis there’s no way to definitively state that Carnes is not, in fact, a black woman.
What of all the black females who’ve appropriated white culture to straighten their hair? Or live in an English styled home, wear English or European styled clothing, adopt a Euro-American lifestyle? That’s all been “appropriated” by the African immigrant.
Black women seen sporting blonde or red hair may be guilty of “cultural misappropriation”. Better lawyer up, ladies!
With apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, suggest that Kelly Carnes sing over and over, I’m going to wash that BROS right out of my hair.
I am reserving the right to go cultural appropriations ballistic, though, if Kelly Carnes resorts to the “comb over” when hiding an ever expanding bald spot with ever thinning hair.
The progressive left is teeming with intolerant, uptight racists obsessed with manipulating each other’s thoughts through intimidation. There is nothing “progressive” or “liberal” about this mindset. It is fascistic.
The Professor skips over an employer’s right to determine what is acceptable appearance for its employees.
That would most assuredly be a part of the litigation he describes.
What their Director did at Burning Man, beginning with attending it, can still be considered reflection poorly upon her employers reputation and standing within the community at large.
The tie goes to the runner….and the Woman’s (am I allowed to describe “her” as such these days) off duty conduct seems outside the authority of the employer in this case but had “she” turned up for work with that style of coiffeur then perhaps they would have better standing in their reaction.
Wokism should never be an excuse for poor taste and conduct.
What is the key issue is why that particular person wound up in the position of Director. Definitely, a very poorly done background. investigation.
The background checks at Baltimore Rock Opera Society consist of proving you’re a lefty.
Excellent legal analysis, Professor, but doesn’t this case need a plaintiff?
If she doesn’t already know, Carnes will soon find out that her future life prospects are better served by recanting than by pursuing a lawsuit.
And this is Baltimore, Maryland, where the defendant is a progressive darling. We shouldn’t count on the state rushing in to intervene like Letitia James did on the Trump-Deutsche Bank case.
Any decent lawyer in Baltimore will tell her exactly that. Cover your cornrows with a keffiyeh, negotiate a confidential settlement with a little severance, and you’ll be making bank at a new NGO before the braids grow out.
And whatever you do, be sure to delete the Kenny Chesney song “Boston” from your Spotify playlist.
Well then, using this “logic”, let’s chastise and cancel Michelle Obama, Gayle King, Oprah, Maxine Waters for straightening their hair to look like white girls!
The only minority status worthy of legal recognition, one open to every man and woman, is the reasonable person. Our Constitution was established by men of reason, for the express purpose of protecting the public from the unreasonable rule of the unfair and ignorant, and yet we have somehow reached the point in today’s America, in which it is the reasonable person alone who, in the workplace, the school, the home, and the public square, must tread without protection.
Social media (anyone can publish anonymously and irresponsibly) was a reckless wrong turn. It made techies like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuck fabulously wealthy while destroying the quality of public discourse. They overnight evaporated standards of public discourse evolved over centuries. I disagree with Turley that a nation such as ours can thrive in a completely unmoderated, rage-drenched media environment — no, we’ve become dysfunctional and vulnerable to foreign interference. Hothead emotionalists have seized the mic and will not voluntarily give it back to dispassionate voices of reason.
One way to take it back is to repeal Section 230, which will force all publishing platforms to bring back human supervision over content — who is contributing content and what are their motives?
Old School, innocent until proven guilty.
Granted and full disclosure, I have always thought white people with dreadlocks and praising Jah, or sporting bindis and nose chains, were idiots, but this is equally stupid, and the equal inverse.
Cultures that cohabit rub off on each other, and that’s pretty much it. Could the modern left be anymore asinine at this point? I don’t think so. They are spoiled children regardless of age, and wow, do we not need their white savior a$$es making decisions for the rest of us. It’s modern racism, and it’s something to behold. Are the left capable of evolution? Even a little bit? All signs point to, ‘No. No, they are not capable of that.’.
Neanderthals, all of them. So much for the ‘educated’ class. Educated my, a$$. Basic humanity is something they no longer seem to grasp. This is but a symptom.
Sorry, typo, new WP version. It’s James.
Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in the 1890s and was a sport that was played in college solely by white players. It was a sport that was racially segregated until the 1930s. Was it “culturally appropriated” by black players, or are black players, rabidly rooted on and supported by more white fans than black, now the majority of players in both college and professional basketball because of their skillset and because of the meritocracy of competitive sports? Rather than imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, this corn row “cultural appropriation” issue in Baltimore is just another blatant attempt by the race baiters to prevent reconciliation of the races in order to maintain their own personal relevance and personal income stream. It is in their interest to prevent cultural assimilation of races and, also by the way, immigrants. If and when the U.S. eventually overcomes these fringes of continued racial polarization, Chief Justice John Roberts’ exhortation that, “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” is, (I hope) destined to seen as one of the most all-time prescient quotes of an American leader.
The bulk of the profits go to white team owners.
I got fired for having long hair back in the seventies. Fortunately I still have enough of it to wear it long. Hair today, freedoms gone tomorrow.
@Fran
Yeah, but you didn’t get fired for that over ‘appropriation’. Night and day.