The conclusion makes it seem even more vacuously absurd, for two reasons:

1. Once he finds out that it has nothing to do with racism, he still reads racism into its mere existence. Something that had nothing to do with racism by his own admission still managed to be a symbol of racist power and privilege. That is definitionally a pathological perspective on the world. It’s the worst form of willful cognitive dissonance.
2. The whole ordeal wound up revealing the author’s racism, as opposed to some abstract system of white control. Even when he found out the light had nothing to do with racism, he still didn’t like it. Why? Because he still saw it as his son needing a “white man’s permission” for something, and he doesn’t want his son to ask a white man’s permission for “well, anything.”

Completely bonkers. We really need to make up our minds, because the idea that America doesn’t care about minorities, and we need to burn our cities down because the police are genociding the black community, but also we’re in the post-racial “endgame” where the last vestiges of racism can be found in street lights, are not compatible ideas.

“This car is completely totaled,” and “There’s a minor scratch on the rear quarter panel” aren’t the same thing.