I'm a black person in America who has freeform dreadlocks, and I'm not even in school nor do I work in public. Believe me when I say that I'm amazed how people still have a tendency to make comments on the unconventionality of my natural black hair even though it's absolutely none of their fucking business. Early on into developing my freeform dreadlocks, I had an older white man in a psych ward tell me "Did you know a nurse can give you a comb for your hair?". Good God, if I had reacted impulsively, I would've still been in that psych ward to this very day. He might not have said it in bad faith, but either way, the point is that it's not his fucking business at all!

I've also gotten this from black people too, mostly from my conservative Afro-Caribbean family who have said racist things about working class black Americans, believing themselves to be better than them, so that checks out. Once again, this is why I'm glad to be no contact with a lot of people that raised me or people that I grew up with.