Incomprehension

From Dan Chiasson's review of The Anthology of Rap in the January 13 issue of the New York Review of Books:

Only in hip-hop is the age-old comedy of grown-ups trying to understand young people yoked so uncomfortably to the American tragedy of whites trying and failing to understand blacks. Age incomprehension is comic, since everyone eventually grows old; race incomprehension is tragic, since nobody knows what it is like to change races.