TEOTWAWKI : The End Of The World As We Know It, Politically Speaking: The Hip-Hop Divide

I posted a message the other day that referred to Hillary!'s Iowa defeat as TEOTWAWKI --- The End Of The World As We Know It.

At the time, I was being sarcastic. Now, after more thought, I'm convinced that we may be coming to the the end of, if not the world, an era, a social evironment, a way of life, that we know.

I'm going to be fifty years old this year. I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, which, though I feel it wasn't nearly as racist and socially backward as other cities in Texas, had its moments. In the early Sixties, "colored people" --- my parents and I --- lived in certain neighborhoods, went to certain schools, attended certain churches, frequented certain businesses and avoided others. It was a segregational minefield of sorts.

Nowadays, when I tell stories of not being able to buy my way into Playland Park, despite the money in my hand, younger people stare at me blankly, unable to imagine such a thing.

Such blank ignorance makes me happy. As the old folks would say, "We ain't where we need to be, but we shore are better off than we were."

I sense that we are at a similar generational threshold in politics. I'll call it the Hip-Hop Divide.

Since the late Seventies, the hip-hop movement has wrapped around the world in several waves, uniting people born in that time period in a unique outlook.

The white hip-hop generation doesn't see race the way we old heads do. We laughed at the wiggas around the younger set: little white kids who wanted so hard to walk black and talk black. But they are the first generation of white kids who saw something in black culture worth emulating.

This wasn't Elvis, peeking into the windows of the black church while Mahalia was singing; it wasn't the Beatles, listening to Robert Johnson and Chuck Berry records; this was full-on adoption and acceptance of another skin color.