The Fate of Our Race

Sometimes I wallow in my own existential angst so much until I get so frustrated I feel like there is no hope for the future.  I am in the very unique position of being born in the very first year of Gen X’ers.  I was not raised by a Baby Boomer, the generation before me, however; well, at least not the most formative years of my life.  The most formative years of my life, from 0-4, I was raised by Depression Era grandparents who instilled in me values and beliefs that reflected the slave mentality/oppressive/austere practices with which they were raised. Certainly, while I was raised by a Baby Boomer from 4-17, my love, allegiance, and sensibilities have always been more aligned with my grandparents than my biological parents. The differences between myself and the people raised by Baby Boomers are as clear as night and day. I don’t think like, act like, I don’t believe the things that my peers do, nor do I value the same things that they do. I am also in the very unique position of never having a child so I’ve never had anyone to impart my knowledge and mistakes upon. 

It seems that across the board and almost unwavering consistently, that Baby Boomers, those individuals who born between 1946-1966, raised their children with far less standards, guidelines, and restrictions . . . which might not necessarily have been a bad thing given that the alternative was to raise your children in the abusive, restrictive, and stagnating environment of the 50s, but the results have certainly not been positive.  My peers, the X’ers born 1966-86, are the Me generation, self-centered and emotionally immature, but they’ve given birth to the ME, ME, ME, ME, ME generation, the Millennials born ’86-’06, and I’m terrified of what’s going to become of the Gen Z’s, 2006-‘26.  Baby Boomers and X’ers wanted to raise their children with a life of privilege, a life free of stress and pain.  What they’ve created is a generation of spoiled, self-centered individuals who are incapable of helping to break the chains that have kept us in mental bondage since our collective consciousness was created in this land. 

The studies of traits of Millennials are discouraging, to say the least.  Millennials are pathologically narcissistic, sociopaths, fame-obsessed, tech dependent, under-educated while achieving the highest level of education, and they feel entitled to recognition and reward without having done anything to deserve it.  And while the studies are not encouraging about the state of Millennials, I can guarantee you that African American Millennials were not included in their studies and that the negative traits of Black Millennials are exacerbated and magnified tenfold due to our exposure to continual, institutionalized, and rampant racism.  Ethics, structure, civic-mindedness, altruism, benevolence, responsibility, logic, reasoning, introspection, accountability, integrity, contextual history, literacy, art appreciation, home-economics . . . those are things AND MORE parents stopped teaching their children in the 60’s.  Parents stopped raising children in the 60s and they let the TV and the schools raise them.  It created a self-centered generation that has created an even more pathologically self-centered generation in Millennials.  What, dear lord, is going to become of future generations if we have two generations that have no concept of what the concept of delayed gratification means, or earning your accomplishments rather than just getting them because you’ve reached a milestone?  How are our relationships ever to survive if we have two generations who have no clue what it means to compromise, to apologize, to build a life based on selflessness and shared goals when all they’ve seen are ghetto depictions of relationships, and all they know is focusing on what makes ME feel better?  You can’t teach what you don’t know so how are parents going forward going to teach their children?  And what is to become of us as a race of people if we don’t teach our children the things that will allow us to survive or even excel in this world? 

I might be wrong.  I don’t want to assume my perspective is correct simply because I see things from a much more complex lens than my peers.   Is it “wrong” for your child to get a car just because the Earth has circled the sun 16 times since their birth?  Maybe, it’s a good thing for parents to teach their children that they don’t have to DO anything to be worthy, that they are inherently worthy just for being alive.  I can’t co-sign with that concept entirely because if I were a parent, I would make damn sure that before my child got a car, any kind of car, whether I paid for it or I made them pay for it, that they would be able to fix dinner, clean the house, take out the trash, volunteer in the community, and understand that they had to pay for car insurance, gas, and maintenance as their responsibility.  Of course I would help if they needed it, that’s what parents are supposed to do, but I would not let them just get a car because all their friends have cars.  There is valor in understanding that there are consequences for your actions.  If you aren’t taught that, it’s not a lesson you are going to learn, even if you have to deal with the negative consequences of your actions.  To someone who has never been taught that lesson, they will never see a correlation between their unhealthy behavior and the detrimental outcome of their own actions. 

If I had children, they would start preparing for adulthood YEARS in advance, setting part of their allowance/income aside for the items they will need when they become truly independent and get their first place.  I could never raise child who has never read a book or been to a museum, or who can’t recite the words of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech.  But, I’m not a parent.  I wouldn’t let my child listen to barely literate, monotonous, mono-syllabic, degrading, unintelligent rap/pop music.  I couldn’t.  It’s like giving them an engraved invitation to be hypnotized and indoctrinated by stupidity.  If I were a parent, I would make good and god damn sure my child had a TALENT that they could rely upon.  I would make sure they understood that they need to nurture and develop their creativity, intellect, and understanding of the world before I sent them out as an adult.  They would know how to clean a house, top to bottom, they would know how to articulate their feelings in a mature, healthy discussion without being passive aggressive or co-dependent or hurtful.  But, again, I’m not a parent.  Parents today don’t teach their children any such things. 

My grandparents were as traditionally conservative and blindly conforming to unhealthy practices as any Black people could be who came of age in the 40s.  They taught me, however, to examine things from many different perspectives, to RESEARCH, to investigate, to not just assume that what I know is the “only” truth.  That allowed me to grow up and study world religions, to truly think about how African Americans came to practice Christianity, to learn about other religions and belief systems and to ascertain that Christianity is not a religion but a tool to control the masses.  I’ve studied every major world religion.  I’ve studied Ancient Egyptian beliefs and myths.  I’ve studied New Age, Metaphysical, Mystical, Occult teachings as well as physics and science.  I’m versed and learned in a great many ways that allows me to intelligently discuss, examine, and dissect exactly why I know for a fact that the Bible is written by men who wanted to manipulate and control people with fear.  My grandparents would be HORRIFIED to know that I’m not blindly Christian, like a slave on the plantation afraid that the Big Bad Sky Daddy was going to punish me to eternal damnation, but it’s because they instilled in me a thirst for knowledge, a desire to learn more than just what I’m told, that I have been able to learn and see and understand truths that would otherwise keep me ignorant.  For Black X’ers and Millennials to say, “I’m Christian because my grandparents were and that’s good enough for me,” when they literally have every bit of information in the world available to them at their fingertips, is to say, “I don’t want to be smart or informed.  I don’t want look at history, I don’t want to understand our past, I don’t want to question anything that was beaten into us on the plantation and I’m perfectly fine with that.” 

My grandmother taught me how to sew, how to play piano, how to do every craft known to womankind.  So what, you say!  Those things aren’t important today, right?  Well, the parts of the brain that they stimulated, the skills I learned from continual practice and repetition, from creating things from nothing are skills that people don’t have today and that’s important.   My grandfather taught me about the political process, about government, about activism.  He would sit with me for hours and we would talk about math problems and how to solve them.  It taught me that reasoning, logic, it taught me that I can’t just take things the media tells me at gospel.   Parents stopped teaching their children those things in the 60s.  Materialism, money, celebrity, and shallowness replaced character building skills.  I saw in my grandparents the skills of cooperation, support, love, commitment and partnership.  I see in my peers, selfishness and immaturity, an unwillingness to examine one’s own behaviors for fear of being seen as being inferior or flawed.    They nurtured and believed in one another.  Millennials think relationships are built on tearing down and degrading one another.  How can we evolve as a race if we are stagnating in unhealthy behaviors? 

For as many horrible, damaging, detrimental things my mother did to me when she raised me, she did some things that I am eternally grateful for.    Joan made it her mission to expose me to as much Black culture as she could.  Every Black play, dance company, concert, museum, theater project, anything to do with Black history, we were there.  I NEVER went to school on Martin Luther King’s birthday, even before it was a holiday.  When I was growing up, I HATED that I had to clean the entire house, to do very adult chores, every single solitary Saturday, before I could go outside and play.  She taught home economics for a living so I learned the proper way to set a table, the way to make hospital corners on a bed, the correct way to do laundry, she taught me how to budget for a household and pay essentials first and luxuries for the month get crossed off the list if you don’t have enough income.  People today don’t know that there is a proper way to set the table because they eat out of Styrofoam boxes and no one has ever taught them that there is a right and wrong way to do certain things.  Part of that is slave mentality, I get that.  I get that it’s not the most important thing in the world to know the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork or that there’s a difference between a white wine and a red wine glass.  But it’s also important to note that I’m not a slob. I know how to clean a bathroom, dust, vacuum and keep a house presentable.  I don’t have to be cajoled to load or empty the dishwasher and I’m not so immature that I refuse to put a bag in the trash can because I think I’m too good to do it.  I’m also not caught up on instant gratification which is a trait of an immature person.  I’m aware that genres of music exist beyond what’s played on the radio and I read more Black history books before I was 15 than the average 15 other Black people combined have read in their entire lives.  We’ve lost that.  X’ers and Millennials have never read a book in their entire lives.  Well, other than Zane and 50 Shades of Gray which were so poorly written, so laughably and horribly illiterate that it’s frightening.   Millennials don’t read more than 140 characters so I guess the fact that they have read at least one book is . . . who am I kidding, it’s pathetic. 

I’m afraid for our future.  I’m afraid because we (Baby Boomers on down) have not taught our children to be activists.  But, you say, Black Lives Matter is being championed by Millennials, it’s their energy that has given voice to the concerns of a generation being slaughtered unjustly.  But look deeper at the movement, something that most X’ers and beyond can’t and don’t know how to do.   BLM is a movement without an objective.   Are they fighting for legislation?  Are they trying to get a bill passed that will address police brutality and the institutionalized racism that has rendered us target practice for white police who see us as animals?  That’s how change is created.  Nope, BLM activists are Twitter bullies telling anyone who doesn’t agree with them to have two seats.   BLM is predicated on the fact that “being respectable” is a bad thing, as if carrying oneself with dignity and character, being articulate, educated, and informed are bad things. They can’t even comprehend that being ghetto is not inherent to being Black.  They think that being inarticulate, dysfunctional, and disenfranchised is the definition of Blackness, they are fighting for our worst behaviors to be seen as normalized.  BLM is based on the premise that those who came before us, those who shed their blood and died, who sacrificed and suffered didn’t do a damn thing, that they were sellouts, that all that is important in a historical context are the self-centered needs of people to be even more self-centered without any repercussions.  So, while most Black people think that BLM is a great achievement, that it’s momentous and life-altering, it’s only because they have no clue or context of what it means to truly create social change.  A #hashtag does not beget equality or social change. 

If you ask any parent, they will swear that they are the best parent, that they’ve never done anything wrong, that they teach and guide and shape their children and the things I’m writing about apply to everyone else but them.  Again, you can’t teach what you don’t know so if you’ve never been taught to be introspective, you have no clue that you aren’t teaching it to your children.  If you’ve never be thought to use logic and reason, if you’ve never been held accountable for your wrongdoings, you can’t pass that knowledge down to your children.  And trust and believe that the school systems are making sure that Black students don’t know the educational basics.  They are being tested and after the test, they forget everything that they learned and they are ill-prepared to face the future with any sort of intellect whatsoever.  Learning involves more than taking a test.  So what exactly are children learning today?  And what will they teach their children?

I have dreams and plans, real ones, laid out, developed, intricate plans on creating a paradigmatic shift in consciousness for African Americans.  I’ve been working on them for more than 15 years.  I’ve conceived of and outlined very specific ideas that will attempt to lift us out of our quagmire of dysfunction and slave mentality.  I’m not for a second suggesting that I’m completely healed from my own issues, in fact, it is a sign of my emotional maturity to unequivocally state that I know for a fact that none of us, myself included, no one who has his or her ancestry steeped in the horrors of slavery is immune to the disease of slave mentality.  Not one Black person is immune from the plague of the fallacy of white supremacy.  I’m at least aware of my own shortcomings.  That’s something most Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials are incapable of doing.   I hope like hell I can work through my own issues enough to be able to exact some significant change in my lifetime.  I hope that the children of the today, the Z’s or whatever they are going to be called, might have a brighter future if I can at least start to chip away at the unhealthy mindsets that debilitate us today.