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.
