No, you just can’t pay attention and make any effort to understand nuance and perspectives outside of your own.

Yeah, and a lot of black people didn’t allow their children to have natural hair. Where do you think that all came from?

And doesn’t your own point refute your argument? Styles change. So it’s largely his parents who didn’t keep up with the times.

Though there are exceptions, the perception that cornrows are thuggish is overwhelmingly a white perspective rather than a black one and that’s what’s at play here.

Your blind spot is that cornrows in the black community are generally not seen as sloppy or thuggish. Your comment seems to indicate that you feel it is. That’s more of (some) white people’s perceptions. So it’s literal racism when telling a minority group to conform to the dominant racial group’s perception of acceptable appearance - especially as it relates to hair where there’s obvious genetic and subsequent cultural differences. I guess you could argue he should’ve accepted the status quo - but that’s hardly a case for proving it isn’t problematic. By that measure, all black people 50 years ago shouldn’t challenge to having to wear a form of straight hair.

I understand that parents from all types of backgrounds correct their children in their appearance, but this circumstance demonstrates an example where adoptive parents need to be culturally sensitive and aware. I’m sure they did many things right and cared for him - he even says so in the article. But it doesn’t mean they were right in this circumstance. They, like anyone else, don’t have to be fundamentally racist in order to still have underlying racial biases and blind spots.

Yeah but cornrows are seen as “thuggish” by white people rather than black people (largely). It’s pretty much the centuries old debate of what makes “good hair” which is largely shaped by the dominant white culture.

So do you think cornrows make a black person look like a thug?

Did your disagreements involve cornrows and being called a little thug?

Did anyone read the article? Whatever your feelings about him, what he said is pretty straightforward and accurate. Saying he looks like a little thug if he wanted to wear cornrows is problematic. He also said he knows they loved him, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that they didn’t understand how some of their biases came into play when parenting a child from another ethnicity. It’s a necessary discussion.

Yes, but I might push the next person who reposts this