I am one of those people who see life as a slippery slope of grey. Why is that? I think much of it comes from the variety of people I have been around from a youth until now. I also think that I am a product of my generation.
If you look at Baby Boomers for instance, most of them had limited influences growing up. They may have lived in a segregated community so they were limited in the amount of culture they were exposed to in that sense. They probably had one television in the house. If you did have one it was a luxury and there were not that many channels. You had to most likely share that one TV with a lot of people. And many of them grew up in a household where one parent worked and the other was the bread winner. The parents had stronger credibility as they were the major influence.
Fast forward. Next was Gereration X (if I'm correct), then came Generation Y (also know as The Net Generation or Millenials). We grew up with digital cable/satellite (a multitude of media outlets via the televisions) and the internet (information at our fingertips). Schools were intergrated by the time I went. Many of the things that were taboo in society are normalized now. The difference between right and wrong is not that simple for me.
Because of that exposure to so much information, I understand motivation now. It's not that prostitution is wrong...it's that it's not a taxable institution. Make it an "escort" service, now it's legal. Gambling was wrong as long as people were running numbers...give them a "gaming" license, make it a taxable institution and now it's all good. Who remembers prohibition? Alcohol was illegal when people were making moon shine, that's a lost art and now alcohol is again legal. The more you know, things that once were clear is not as clear anymore.
I'm sure that hip hop was also a major influence on my thinking. A simple song like "I'll Pay Fa It" by Soulja Slim is not as bad as it may seem anymore. Yes the song is about paying for sex. We know from Ted Haggard and John Edwards that people do it. I'm from the westbank and I can tell you that if you are on the wrong part of 4th St. late at night, you might see some of that going on. A co-worker that traveled to Europe told me about the ports. They used to have rooms that the sea men could pay to have sex with women at the parts. If we go back to the Bible, Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and there is talk of concubines. So whereas people try to say hip hop has created a terrible society, these things were already there. Hip hop sometimes normalizes the behavior (and people in turn don't feel bad about engaging in it).
Similarly, people ask me, "As a black man do you get upset when you see another black man with gold fronts, listening to loud music, and wearing sagging pants?" I don't. Just like the African man in the dashiki, the Scottish guy wearing the plaid skirt, that is his culture. And who am I to judge him because I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood and went to Catholic school my whole life. He is culturally different from me and I have no room to judge him.
With that said, I have become a total grey thinker. Am I wrong because my moral boundaries are not clearly defined or because I feel like much of the landscape of what we live in is TOTALLY made up. Think about it. Is there really anything that you can say is a clear yes or no, a clear black or white? JUST A THOUGHT
