Robert Tomlinson,

It is clear that you have been severely traumatized by this experience and i feel for you. May i suggest you fill out a Butthurt report form?

http://www.butthurtreportform.com/

Hate to tell you this, Liz, but just about every single ingredient of white American culture was appropriated from somewhere else if you look into it closely, usually discarding or changing the historical significance that it originally had. There's no getting away from it. And I see lots of kinds of people in Portland sporting the hairstyle in question, not just privileged white kids — pretty broad generalizations there. Not to mention claiming to speak for all be-dreaded white people's personal views on why they did that to their hair: because it's "earthy," because they want to emulate poverty, etc. What's the basis for generalizations like that other than maybe having talked to a tiny sample size and then adopting an easy stereotype?
And what area are we talking about here that only has 1.7% people of color? Not the city of Portland, that's for sure.
The whole "white"/POC distinction is widespread but seems dangerously close to reinforcing the idea of an "other." And yet a lot of the people who are visually "white" have a serious degree of mixed ancestry going on. Attributing a single view of "people of color" to "white people" on the whole ("the notions we have..." as you say) seems simplistic to the extreme.
I'm sure this comment will get disliked with a vengeance because people will assume I'm sticking up for the hated white-people dreads. I'm not, but have at it. Wow, you guys hate dreads on white people? Fascinating, I haven't already met a hundred other people with the exact same tastes and opinions before. Your cultural views are so unique and stuff!

Sorry Merc Staff, love you all, but I just gotta giggle every time I read the line about you being "leaders in the media world"!