Don’t judge a book by its cover or a person by their hair

Growing up in rural Alabama in the ’60s and ’70s, I learned a few things, and one of them was that anyone with dreadlocks was a thug. A bandit who cannot be trusted and, preferably, should be avoided. I knew it was true because that was the opinion of most of the adults in my daily life – and they would certainly never lead me astray.

But they never knew Deanthonie Summerhill.

I’m not sure when or how we met Deanthonie, although we had a few things in common. We both grew up in Alabama and came to Tennessee for college, although we were about 25 years apart. And somehow, despite Deanthoni’s dreadlocks, we found ourselves in each other’s company more and more during his time at the University of Tennessee – so much so that my wife and I began to consider him a member of our family. Dreadlocks and all.

After finishing his college football career and graduating from UT, Deanthonie returned to Alabama, earned his law degree and now has a beautiful family of two children.

I still sometimes feel like judging a book by its cover, but I’ve learned not to socially disqualify a man because of his hair.

The late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime partner at Berkshire Hathaway, was right when he observed that if you don’t change your mind about something significant all year long, it will be a wasted year. Munger was 99 when he died last November; I suspect one of the richest and (in my opinion) smartest men in the world has had plenty of practice changing his mind.

It will probably be easier to change your mind if you don’t attach your ego to your positions – something that all successful traders eventually learn. Only a fool becomes so committed to his position that he ignores all evidence that he may be wrong. The Rev. George Doebler, founder of the UT Medical Center Chaplaincy Program, regularly says that if someone thinks they know something, they may not know half of it. But if someone believes they know something, they almost certainly know less than half of it.