Thank the Boomers, Don’t Berate Them

With the changing of the guard in DC, many speculate that January 20th will symbolize the passing of an entire generation: the baby boomer years.  However, it’s more than a generational change with Obama being a relatively young president, it is more like a sense that a cultural era is ending.  This was a very unique era  dominated by the boomers, many of whom came of age in the ’60s and experienced the bitter divisions caused by the Vietnam War and the protests against it, the civil rights struggle, social change, sexual freedoms, and more.  The peace sign was our symbol and our slogan was Us Against the Man.  It is theorized by many that those experiences, led boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, to become deeply motivated by the need to address all of the social injustices that our country had long ignored. 

Now, Obama leads a new movement, one of pragmatism.  He has begun a charge that has awakened the American masses to again seek change and this is good and timely.  His mode of operation is not the way of confrontation that pushed opened the doors of equality for a black man to run for president, but one that focuses on new hopeful, feel-good ways to solve problems by bringing all parties to the table to dialogue.  He looks down on the 60s movement with scorn.  In fact, in his book, The Audacity of Hope, in reference to the 2000 and 2004 elections he wrote: “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation - a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago - played out on the national stage.”

I acknowledge that this is a new generation and with each generation comes many new things, including new ways to run a government and new ways to motivate the public.  But, instilling a new regime with new ideas does not give one the right to berate what came before. To be an American back then was to conform, be quiet and sedate. To be a black American was to sit in the back of the bus. Other Americans were just invisible to the system.  We had to be loud and outspoken and demonstrative to be recognized as a force of change.  Our generation did a lot of good with our (so-called psychodrama) campus sit-ins and our demonstrations and marches. We had the audacity to stand up and be heard and worked hard to get equal rights for all those considered to be second-class citizens in the 60’s (women, blacks, disabled veterans, American indians and homosexuals) I am proud that we were a generation that banded together to stand behind what we believed in even if we were a rough and ready, unpolished, motley group and until Obama proves that his way can work as effectively as ours did and he can accomplish as much in as little time as we did, he needs to put a lid on passing judgement and instead reach out a hand and say, “Thank you, because of what you did back then, now I have this opportunity to  make a difference for America today.”

Rule of thumb to follow: Everything in its time; in its way. Peace!!’; //leave this line

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