You know I was thinking about this further....and the more I think about it's about personal attitude...I have red hair and when I was walking home on St Pat's day some random guy who happened to be black if that's meaningful to you asked "You have to have some Irish in you" I just said yeah just a little...its maybe less than 5% of my heritage as we are mostly German. Once another random person who also happened to be black asked if I was one of those albino white people. I simply said no and moved on. I can't say I was offended by either encounter.

When I was a little kid every single time I went to the store with my mom some (typically white and older) lady would come over and ask where I got my red hair from and I would just say my dad. You would not believe the number of people with no concept of genetics who insisted it must skip a generation so I must be wrong. I just looked at my mom who said she got it from her father.

Here is the commonality of these stories people ask because they want to interact and physical characteristics are an obvious opening just like nice necklace, dress, etc. If I though everyone who asked me about me hair thought of me as some sort of oddity then it would be a problem instead I choose to think they find me fascinating and would like to interact...if they didn't like my characteristics then why say anything to me at all? The people who don't say hello because they think I'm strange rather than neat well those are the ones to be afraid of. I say teach him not to be offended, changing yourself is hard but getting society to change is nearly impossible.