We’re in this social and political moment together, regardless of your age. So, let’s please end this ridiculous focus on generations?
I suppose one needs to acknowledge that generational identity isn’t exactly new. In the age of identity politics, though, where membership criteria are crucial and exclusionary lines are drawn, capital-G Generation has taken on a new shape and form. And there’s been an obsessive attention to these birth-year categories as well. Generation Z. X. Millennials. Baby Boomers. If you follow any sort of media, you can’t go a week without hearing someone criticize or praise one of these “generations”. I won’t dignify any of them by listing what people say comprise their characteristics, because they’re all depressing bullshit. I’ll give you at least three reasons why:
One: they’re really about social class. Each generation supposedly comprises a group of age-range related people with shared experiences and interests. But tease apart any of them and you’ll see age has nothing to do with what’s being described. Young people are more invested in the environment than old? Please. Baby Boomers are making it tough for younger people to get by? Yeah, the problem here is home ownership (just wait until they die and pass along their mortgage-free houses to their kids!) as if there aren’t plenty of poor and exploited Boomers. Peel back the onion of each and every presumed characteristic or shared concern of a generation and you’ll find a class-based characteristic or concern. The young are fundamentally different in worldview than the old? As a 2015 survey suggested, “Millennials are just about as racist as their parents.” The imaginary characteristics of a given “generation” disappear once crucial factors like race and class are accounted for.
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