The people fighting for civil rights were a small minority, especially within the white population, and were almost universally hated. There is a stark difference in the way our generation and that generation viewed equality and civil rights.
I used to believe that. The issue is that people legitimately don’t agree on what the solution is. And those solutions vary wildly, and many of them are actively more dangerous than our current precarious situation. I can’t march on the enemy next to someone who believes climate change is a lie spread by China, and they likely will have entirely different ideas of who the enemy actually is than I do, for instance.
The underlying point is not to march alongside someone who disagrees with you, its that there are Boomers and Gen Xrs who agree with you and they’ve been waiting for enough young people to join them. It’s not just Bernie Sanders and no other Boomers. The same Gen X people who grew up on Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine and still fight for the beliefs espoused in that music are here. We are frustrated that so many young people just seem to want to check out, when we’ve needed them to help us win these battles for so many years.
When I first became an atheist, only 9% of the US was ‘none’, meaning atheist, agnostic, or no religion. Now it’s 30%. I haven’t gone anywhere, just happily watching the world change and I know a lot of it is those younger than I am.
Nobody is suggesting that. The suggestion is that we stop automatically assuming someone believes something just because they are a certain age. We should judge people on their beliefs alone. If someone is a Boomer racist, they are a racist who happens to be a Boomer and never grew as a person. If someone is Gen Z and a racist, they are not racist because they are Gen Z, they are just racist.
I know people in Gen X who claim to not understand ‘anything about computers’ and I’m clueless how that happened. We had computers in the 70s and video games in the 80s. We were labeled the ‘slacker generation’ because of our Apple computers and video games, and somehow there’s a wide swath of people who just made the decision to be ignorant by choice of all of that. Are Gen X people just computer illiterate? They certainly shouldn’t be, so if they are, it’s by choice. If someone is a Boomer and a racist, it’s by choice, not by age. There will absolutely be people in Gen Z who turn 40 years old a in a couple of decades and claim not to understand something that they have right now.
I also know quite a few Boomers who are completely openly accepting of LBGQT people and every race. At the same time, I know a lot of young tech guys who are clearly misogynistic and racist, if not overtly. I judge them on their beliefs and if they are trying to evolve, not their age.
The lack of opportunity for developing generations, in relation to the older generations, is driving a localism/tribalism mentaliyy that often will correlate to, if not conflate, a racial identity.
I hate that 60’s civil rights argument.
The people fighting for civil rights were a small minority, especially within the white population, and were almost universally hated. There is a stark difference in the way our generation and that generation viewed equality and civil rights.
It’s not an ‘argument’, it’s an example of how divisively branding entire groups is undermining us. It’s divide and conquer, and it’s working.
We need to work together now, everywhere, to enact change, not wait.
I used to believe that. The issue is that people legitimately don’t agree on what the solution is. And those solutions vary wildly, and many of them are actively more dangerous than our current precarious situation. I can’t march on the enemy next to someone who believes climate change is a lie spread by China, and they likely will have entirely different ideas of who the enemy actually is than I do, for instance.
The underlying point is not to march alongside someone who disagrees with you, its that there are Boomers and Gen Xrs who agree with you and they’ve been waiting for enough young people to join them. It’s not just Bernie Sanders and no other Boomers. The same Gen X people who grew up on Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine and still fight for the beliefs espoused in that music are here. We are frustrated that so many young people just seem to want to check out, when we’ve needed them to help us win these battles for so many years.
When I first became an atheist, only 9% of the US was ‘none’, meaning atheist, agnostic, or no religion. Now it’s 30%. I haven’t gone anywhere, just happily watching the world change and I know a lot of it is those younger than I am.
No I get that, but I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t a stark difference of trends between boomers and millennials.
Nobody is suggesting that. The suggestion is that we stop automatically assuming someone believes something just because they are a certain age. We should judge people on their beliefs alone. If someone is a Boomer racist, they are a racist who happens to be a Boomer and never grew as a person. If someone is Gen Z and a racist, they are not racist because they are Gen Z, they are just racist.
I know people in Gen X who claim to not understand ‘anything about computers’ and I’m clueless how that happened. We had computers in the 70s and video games in the 80s. We were labeled the ‘slacker generation’ because of our Apple computers and video games, and somehow there’s a wide swath of people who just made the decision to be ignorant by choice of all of that. Are Gen X people just computer illiterate? They certainly shouldn’t be, so if they are, it’s by choice. If someone is a Boomer and a racist, it’s by choice, not by age. There will absolutely be people in Gen Z who turn 40 years old a in a couple of decades and claim not to understand something that they have right now.
I also know quite a few Boomers who are completely openly accepting of LBGQT people and every race. At the same time, I know a lot of young tech guys who are clearly misogynistic and racist, if not overtly. I judge them on their beliefs and if they are trying to evolve, not their age.
The lack of opportunity for developing generations, in relation to the older generations, is driving a localism/tribalism mentaliyy that often will correlate to, if not conflate, a racial identity.