Why Gen-X and Millennial Black Folks Are What’s Wrong With Black America
It’s easy to blame
President Donald Trump for, like, 82 percent of contemporary Black America’s ills. But is he
really the one to blame here? Are members of Generation X and Millennials unknowingly dismantling Black America?
Heavy question…so let’s step back for a second. We need definitions.
Generation X (Gen X) are born between 1965 and 1980. Now,
Millennials are born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s. There is disagreement about the exact years, so let’s just say 1981 to 1996.
Now here’s the issue: The history of Black people in America is one where the previous generation paved the way for the younger one. The last generation of slaves toiled and fought so that their kids could prosper. The same is true for people that the younger generation derisively call “Boomers.” Say what you want about their inability to drive, homophobia and dated taste in music…Black folks who are Boomers and members of the “Greatest Generation” laid the foundation for the comfortable life Black America enjoys today.
They were the ones who fought valiantly in World Wars I and II, the Korean War and were sent off to Vietnam. They were also the ones who protested during the Civil Rights Movement and participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice, ensuring that Black people today could enjoy freedoms they themselves never were able to access.
But what have we done? Millennials and Gen Xers?
Let’s just tell it like it is: We are a generation of Black people that our ancestors would be ashamed of.
The majority of us are politically inactive, and those of us who are mostly share our political outrage on social media where what we say carries minimal weight. We tweet, post TikToks and share Instagram reels like we are actually doing something.
We live comfortably in McMansions surrounded by white neighbors that earlier generations fought for us to have and we work jobs that require us to sound like white people when we answer the phone. And our children? So many Black kids are growing up disconnected from their heritage.
And Black boys are out here clamoring for “exotic” or outright white girls, which is going to set Black girls up with an impossible choice: either marry a man of another race or face the possibility of life alone.
Black America is in a precarious position. We have a President who is directing his administration to do all it can to attack us. We have a Congress and Supreme Court who are just letting him do what he wants. And make no mistake, the police are still
killing us in the streets.
Older generations understood something that many of us have forgotten.
We are not white people. It may be 2025, but we still must fight so that the next generation of Black people will have it better than we had it.
Gen X and Millennial Black folks, one question: Are we the problem?