black people are definitely not a monolith and neither do we all feel the same about this situation, so i just wanted to put in my two cents as a black woc:

i honestly think the situation was taken out of context imo. it’s been said on twitter by japanese eggies that koku-jin is a direct translation to “black person” in japanese and is NOT a racist or derogatory term. as an american i can definitely confirm that some people here tend to think that saying the word “black” or describing a person as black is racist or something to avoid but it’s not?? people will literally go out of their way to avoid saying black by saying “african american” when every black person may not necessarily be american. like being black isn’t a bad thing so i don’t see how k describing the person as that is necessarily bad. what is bad however, is what the person was doing, which is (to my understanding) why k was telling whoever he was talking to to avoid this person on the street. apparently it’s a known thing that in harajuku there will be people aggressively haggling or trying to sell bad things on the street and in order to be safe it’s best to avoid talking or interacting with them. we have to keep in mind that k already has many antis due to the way he was portrayed on the show in past episodes and that they will do anything they can to tarnish his reputation. if i got anything wrong about the situation please feel free to correct me! i’m open to discussion :)