Race isn't black and white either.

Think back to your unit on the Martin Luther King times. Whites had this bathroom, blacks had that. Whites sat in the front of the resterant, blacks sat in the back.

You know.

AND THEN, some of us had NO bathroom to use, NO place in the resterant, had to walk instead of taking the bus, had to order TAKEOUT instead of sitting down.

Imagine the humiliation where you don't belong anywhere on the bus. You can't sit in the front. You can't sit in the back.

The inconvenience of not being allowed to use the better OR worse bathroom.

And to think that some of us complained about not getting the best seat at the resterant. 

Hmmm... I kinda know what you mean... But I kinda don't. Would you explain a bit more? Is it basically two ideas that are opposites?  

The world isn't black and white, because everyone has different ideas. The world is in shades of gray.

Well, 'black and white' doesn't really mean opposites, it means like, things are either one exact way or the other, there's no 'in between or having both.' Life is also in gray, but also color, too. As for experiences, I admittedly kinda thought people were pretty one-sided. I met several that aren't at all. Black and white can be okay, but I like inbween or both the best. 

I think it is physically impossible for the world to be "black and white". Just impossible. Everyone shares different views on life and things, therefore, being thousands, millions, even billions of shades of gray. And on the coke and pepsi thing... you get gray by combining the two. And... It doesn't taste too good, I've tried. xD

Anyways, back on the serious topic. An example of gray within black and white is choices. This is the most common example, from what I have seen, just in a different context. You can choose to steal the cookie, buy/leave it, or eat it on the spot and pay later (or bring a new cookie) which would be gray. 

Or take math. That subject you sometimes hate, sometimes love (which goes into the final example). A math equation, people say can only be "right" or "wrong", but this is false. As funny as it is, take this question and answer: "To change centimeters to meters you _." Answer: "Take out centi." Sorry, I am just full of humor today. But looking at it, it is true. That is a gray shade. People expect you to say the correct answer or the wrong answer. Not something that is... true but wrong nonetheless.

Finally, emotions cannot be black and white. Take a friend, for example. You can like that person for their loyalty, friendliness, etc. but dislike him/her for a flaw. So toward one person, you can feel 2 or more emotions at once. Gray shades, I say. Same goes toward your own emotions that you feel.

Ironically, I was just reading "Where Did You See Her Last?" (All the Wrong Questions, book 2) and they were discussing that-- how one of the characters thought it was just good and evil in a war, but really it's so much more complicated. There aren't always just the bad guys and the good guys, contrary to Disney or Grimm. Everybody's got their history or their reasons and in the end, they aren't evil-- they're misunderstood or thinking in the wrong way. People aren't black and white-- they're grey. Look at Severus Snape. (I won't elaborate for fear of spoilers, but those of you that have finished the series know what I mean.)

@Mei Here's another allusion-- I was reading this book called Inside Out and Back Again about an immigrant from Korea right after the war. It was written in free verse, and in one of the poems she discussed the segregation idea, how the cafeteria she went to was separated into white and black, and how they never considered there would be someone in between. She ended up eating in the teacher's classroom because there was nowhere for her to sit.