"20-year-old listens to racist rapper. Should his parent speak up?"

What if it costs her her child?

Original column: Carolyn Hax, July 16 2024

My take: The LW asks: “What do you say (if anything) when your 20-year-old likes a certain rapper who advocates for the death and destruction of your/his race?”

Her son says he’s just in it for the music and social-media presence, not what the guy says. She doesn’t want to overstep, but she’s miserable about it.

She’s not the only one. Her question opens a topic that’s very, very painful for many, many parents.

As to Carolyn’s response, I’ll cut to the chase: Her advice is mostly excellent. Much of the time, I have my differences with her, and Advice Obsessed has taken her on before, but credit where credit is due. I appreciate her compassion, too, for the mother’s position.

So please read everything Advice Obsessed is about to say with that in mind.

First, Carolyn says parents are supposed to introduce children to moral reasoning, but are not supposed to reason for them, or ensure that their reasoning takes them where the parents want it to go. She says this is especially true when the kids are adults. So far, so good.

But then Carolyn throws in a hopeful note that “beliefs always evolve and deepen with time.” No doubt this encouragement is well-meant, but she’s too sanguine.

About moral beliefs she writes, “we get there when we get there,” and describes a rational process of “using or discarding new information and others’ input as we see fit.” The trouble is, we don’t all get there. It should by now be abundantly clear to every American adult that very few people are open to changing their minds about anything, ever, “information and input” be damned.

On the specific topic of artists we love, but whose politics we despise, Carolyn also points out that we’re all guilty. Just about all of us overlook some unsavory traits in the artists whose work speaks to us. Plenty of imperfect people—plenty of awful people, in fact—have created great art. Like the LW’s son, should we say we’re just tuning in for the music, or the painting, or the literature? Or should we refuse to partake?

Carolyn says if the work is really old, maybe that’s different. She says this tentatively, putting it in a list of possible excuses, but there’s a lot to it. Take Oliver Twist, for instance. It centers on a character whom Dickens calls “the Jew” more often than by his name, Fagin. We’re introduced to Fagin as “a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair.” It goes downhill from there.

Advice Obsessed is a Jew herself, and finds this hard to take. But Oliver Twist was published in 1838, and Fagin’s not the only thing in it. Strict presentism, about this and countless other works, would deprive humanity of a lot.

But does this apply to the LW? Her son likes a rapper who specifically “advocates for the death and destruction of your/his race,” and is doing so right now. The rapper isn’t a matter of historical or academic interest; he’s an active cultural and political problem, as well as, quite possibly, a threat. Advice Obsessed is not going to lie: If she were the mother, she’d find this very hard to swallow.

Dear readers-of-a-certain-age, are some of you remembering when you were young? Did your generation reject a whole lot of bewildered, unhappy parents whose values you found antiquated?

Is the shoe now on the other foot? Is it giving you a wicked blister?

Ultimately, Carolyn advises the LW to play “the long game.” This means trusting that what she’s already taught her son is still in him, though it has yet to emerge. Carolyn also advises listening, and openness to learning from him. The importance of that can’t be overstated.

But her conclusion is just evasive, and that’s disappointing, at the end of an otherwise strong column. She ends with these words: “But what’s the point of the outrage: for its own sake, or to persuade? That’s both the crux of this answer and one entirely unto itself.”

Naturally, the answer is “to persuade.” But that’s not really the choice the mother is facing.

Because the LW is writing about her son, her purpose is to not lose him, either to evil actors, or through estrangement from herself. That’s the crux of the matter, and the answer is hard.

If she makes herself unpleasant, and her son estranges himself, she’ll never find out how or even whether he matures morally, nor will he talk to her as he begins to reconsider.

But if she keeps her mouth shut? He may mature, in which case all will be well. And if he doesn’t mature? It may always be painful, but she’ll still have a son.