It's amazing to me how different people see such different things in the same production. You're right that there is just SO much in this show. I hadn't thought about its message about communication and how Omari's development throughout the play has to do with his mom creating space for him to express himself. I think you're so right! I had focused more on Nya's development, but I agree that one of things that stymies Omari is his parents' not knowing how to get beyond their own internalized white supremacist ideas of what a young black man should or should not be (or more generally, as you point out, any parent's expectations for a view of a child through the lens of who they want them to become -- or not become). When his parents (well really only his mom) are able to view him as he is, without the constraining lens that the real source of his rebellion -- against everything telling him what to be and what not to be regardless of who he IS -- Omari is finally ok. That he doesn't reach this place of acceptance with his dad is also important I think. His dad is clearly somewhat emotionally bankrupt and just needs to look away (and leave the neighborhood and his first family), in order to maintain the illusion of his own identity and life decisions. But the dad is sympathetic, too: the playwright does a good job of making sure that we can't fully blame the dad for his decisions -- he's trying to get by in a system that gives him little choice. Makes me think about what the play is calling white viewers to do to change the narrow options available to black men at the end of the play...