INTERGENERATIONAL INFLUENCE

Several years ago a brother suggested I write about controversial topics so I did, in a post on discounts for seniors. These days I am preoccupied with the word “woke”. African Americans first used “woke” to mean being informed and conscious of racial inequality and social injustice. The slang word gained popularity since the Black Lives Matter movement when many of us proudly claimed to be woke. Lately, however, it’s become a shorthand term for identity politics, used by people on the left to signal progressiveness and as a put-down by those on the right. While the notion of being — and staying — “woke” is too complex for me to address here, it provides an excuse to talk about intergenerational influence.

Members of seven generations are alive today: the Greatest Generation (born between 1901 and 1924), the Silent Generation (1925 to ’45), Boomers (1946 to ’64), Generation X (1965 to ’79), Millennials or Generation Y (1980 to ’94), Generation Z (1995 to 2012) and Generation Alpha (2013 to 2025).

MOVEMENTS

In the 19th century the word “feminism” indicated the state of being feminine. By the century’s end it referred to equal rights for women and the suffragist movement. In the sixties, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem — of the Greatest and the Silent Generations — sparked a second wave of American feminism dealing with women’s experiences in work, family, politics, and sexuality. Boomers joined the women’s liberation movement — and proudly claimed to be feminists. Third and fourth waves of feminism followed. New research finds 53 per cent of millennials and 52 per cent of Gen Z (compared to 46 percent of Gen X and 40 percent of Boomers) think women’s rights have gone so far that we are discriminating against men. Yet “women are still disproportionally affected by all forms of violence and by discrimination in every aspect of life.” 

In December 1955, Rosa Parks (1913-2005) launched the modern civil rights movement in Montgomery AL by refusing to move to the back of the bus. Martin Luther King (1929-68) led the struggle for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the U.S. Despite considerable progress, “intentional racial discrimination still exists… At its core, today’s movement is fighting systemic racism,” writes Perry Bacon Jr in The Washington Post. The challenges are more complicated than defeating Jim Crow in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Hence the need to be antiracist. From the National Museum of African American History and Culture: “In the absence of making antiracist choices, we (un)consciously uphold aspects of white supremacy, white-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society. Being racist or antiracist is not about who you are; it is about what you do.”

In 1969, the Stonewall Riots catalyzed the gay rights movement. Harvey Milk (1930-78) of the Silent Generation was anything but silent about gay and civil rights. In 1977 he became one of the first openly gay politicians elected to office in the U.S. Less than a year later a white bigot shot and killed Milk and Mayor Moscone in part because of their opposition to police violence and abuse of racial minority and LGBTQ+ San Franciscans. After Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in 2020, Professor Lincoln Mitchell connected the murders of 1978 to Black Lives Matter.

Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2017 was a movement: MeToo shared stories of sexual harassment in the workplace. I rued my quiet acquiescence after reading “Boomers didn’t invent sexual harassment. But they should have ended the practice, rather than spending decades perpetuating it.”

My ramblings introduce topics worthy of H.O.T. (honest, open, two-way) intergenerational discussions. Click on the hyperlinks in my text for background material on the movements.

Several generations influenced — and continue to influence — my values and ideals. About being “woke”, our biracial, Millennial son says simply, “Be aware.” Rather cryptic advice to follow, but I try. •