gs1r: Greater Social Tolerance and Acceptance Through Hip-Hop!

I've been working as a mentor for my church's youth ministry for a year and a half now, being involved in teen lives, listening, connecting, advising and serving them to my absolute pleasure. Being around them keeps me fresh on their music and culture, enough to notice a lot more social tolerance between races in today's high school societies. For example, to be candid and honest, I've been noticing a lot more white and Asian kids wear Nike Dunks and sagging pants, more black and Latinos kids wearing RVCA, Volcom and Active, creating an amazing new mix of styles in urban clothing and culture that is becoming less and less racist as our society socially progresses =)

The current generation of teens have the internet, laptops, cell phones, Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, limewire, google, twitter and many more social services like these, making available an overwhelming variety of 21st century technology to communicate and disburse all kinds of media to each other. From apartment to apartment, city to city, nation to nation, people are able to connect and influence each other in ways that in the past would practically never happen. The Hip-Hop artists of today are able to display their sound to the world like never before, making head's nod to the Hip-Hop beat in Japan from New York! And because of these things, urban culture is starting to mesh together, making some historical styles and recreation typical to a race more color-blind. Hip-Hop isn't just for black people anymore just like skating isn't just for whites anymore. Kanye West can wear a nice suit just like Eminem can wear a doo-rag.

Artists like Lupe Fiasco, Lil Wayne and Pharrell Williams are examples of not only incorporating other styles of dress, but making music with sounds and feels from other genres. Even Lil Wayne, though criticized for it, is about to come out with a new rock album, the single off of it being "Prom Queen." All these things are influencing urban culture and the kids, high school and college students, and young adults living in it, encouraging them to accept and respect, even take interest in getting to know each other culturally, dress in each other styles of clothes, listen to music not culturally or even racially attached to their own race or ethnicity (ex: rock, rap, salsa, reggaeton), totally making social stratification a little less for the benefit of all people!

So say what you will about hip-hop and it's negatives (myself included) but know that it is massively attracting diversity and mixing it up in a melting pot and unify it into one dish for us to eat!