I miss racial and cultural segregation.

Without it, pop music is a terribly depressing place. There was once a time where popular music was driven by fear, then acceptance of the other. Rock and rolll was driven by the push of race music and the pull of Elvis Presley, opening the door to many wild generations of culturally powerful expression. Disco? The fear of gays opened Stonewall, and the acceptance led to Studio 54, and, well, at the present, about a solid 75% of top 40 culture. Hip-hop? The byproduct of black and white cultural acceptance. Debbie Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons opening the door wide to an idyllic reality that accurately reflects the totality of universal culture.

We’re now at a point where all of the lines have been crossed. Black is white, red is brown, and it’s probably even possible that yellow and blue could make a lot of green. Gay marriage is legal, the President is black, and most of this is pop music’s fault. We’ve made a commodity out of our differences, everything awash in a culture of same. Sure, you could be reductive and think backwards thoughts, but you can’t pull back a scab and bleed when the wounds all appear to be healed.

It’s impossibly difficult now to be fresh and progressive in music. Miscegenation as the new rule is frustrating. Living in a world without an open acceptance of fear is annoying. When changes don’t appear that now have cause to occur, it’s a clear finger pointing at the steadfast person as being anachronistic, a demonic memory of our shared, terrible, universal cultural history.

I think we’ve jumped into the cultural abyss. Be honest. Are you as uncomfortable as I am?