We’ve got next. That’s how us so-called “millennials” should approach this brave new world with so many goodly – and even more, perhaps, “badly” – people in it.
A recent article in The New York Times termed our group, those born after 1980, the “Go-Nowhere Generation,” asserting that we’re “risk-averse and sedentary.” The authors condemn our apparent immobility. We don’t ride bikes. We don’t drive cars. One-third of us live in cities. It seems 44 percent of us believe marriage is obsolete, compared to the 35 percent of Baby Boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) who believe the same thing.
We’re skeptical about our parents’ values. Marriage is an institution that creates family units that structure society and normalize heterosexuality at the expense of queer-identified couplings and other “alternative” family structures. Digital media and social networking don’t simply turn one’s brain to mush; they can also serve as mediums through which cross-cultural bonds and sustained long-distance relationships can be created. Distinctions between “low” and “high” culture are less absolute with many millennial professionals sporting tattoos underneath their white-collar button-downs.
Most of our heroes are members of Generation X, comprised of people born roughly between 1965 and 1980, who buffer some of us against our parents or who might, as in my case, be our parents. Members of Generation X were similarly charged with political complacency by preceding generations. Too young to live through the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, these young people instead lived through hip-hop, Reagan and crack cocaine (not necessarily in that order).
Struggling against the hostilities incurred from multiple sectors of the mainstream media, a prominent voice emerged in Generation X – rapper Tupac Shakur. At a Malcolm X Grassroots Movement lecture in the early 1990s, Tupac was told to watch his language by an older woman. Pac turned to her and said, “I’m sorry if my language offends you, but it can’t offend you any more than the world your generation has left me to deal with.”
Pac’s words not only provide an explanation for his use of such language, they also acknowledge that the burden of righting the wrongs committed by previous generations lies with us, the current generation. They also recognize that we are born into a world of established inequities. Tupac’s generation learned that some of these inequities were sponsored by a repressive state. Although the state had laws on the books against race and gender oppression, those wrongs happened anyway. Generation X watched as Rodney King, Johnny Gammage and Amadou Diallo were brutalized by police officers – the latter two killed – and denied justice, even in death, with the acquittal of the offending officers. These murders, along with a host of other atrocities, shaped the political consciousness of my parents and their generation.
It’s now our turn to develop a political consciousness around our experiences with injustice.
How will we respond when a 19-year old student at this university threatens to commit acts of violence? Will we empathize with him based on our collective understanding that college can be a stressful, alienating and sometimes chaotic environment? Or will we dismiss his distress, attribute it to a remote pathology and call him “crazy,” thereby painting him as the “problem” and not questioning his environment?
What will we do when one of our own is taken from us in the prime of his youth in Sanford, Fla.? Will we think twice the next time a young male of color passes us on the street at night? Or will we ignore the lesson until another Trayvon Martin is murdered?
As a group, these questions will hamper us whether we address them or not. Regardless of our decision, we’ve got next.
Michael Casiano is a senior American studies and English major. He can be reached at casiano@umdbk.com.
