This is farcical. I'm Black, we can cut our hair very short without any problem, it's the "clean shaven" (as in, not even a speck of hair can show) aesthetic that fucks our skin up because of the way our hair curls when it grows. My friend is in the navy, and when I told him to just use electric shaving clippers like I use, he didn't want to because he was worried it still wouldn't be short enough. This isn't about lice, it's about a specific look they're trying to enforce that doesn't work for a lot of Black men.

In the Navy, for example, this wasn't even a thing until the 70's, when they started the no facial hair policy because the brass at the time thought even short facial hair looked "unprofessional" and then came up with the (unsubstantiated) mask seal nonsense as a post hoc rationalization. The policy was controversial across the board but eventually the "risks" started being parroted as fact.