In Defense Of Gen-Y: Is It Just Me?
Is it just me or does Generation-Y always have a bad reputation? I’ll go ahead and answer that, it’s not just me, our generation truly doesn’t get any respect. We are a living, breathing punch line for the politicians, media or for anyone born before the 1980s.
In politics, we are usually cataloged into one particular political party, usually the Democratic Party, simply because we are stereotyped by the generation before us. I find this to be especially insulting as personally I believe that people are more than how they vote. Obviously, the former generations don’t have the power to see that political parties are man made categories that they’ve willingly trapped themselves in to feel better about themselves.
In the media, we’re blamed for all of the world’s injustices for as they claim “we are not like we used to be.” Generation-Y cannot possibly be just like Generation-X. The passing of time and the evolution of our society has insured this. Our marriages will be different.
As parents, we will be different. Even our careers will be different. We will have to be wiser and more innovative than our predecessors because the world will demand us to do so. Time marches on and it would never be wise to emulate a dying way of life.
Even our parents or anyone who believes they have seniority make jokes of us. There have also been times where I’ve felt hostility from those who belong to Gen-X. To quote a former employer of mine (who was only 10 years older than me), “Something needs to happen to that generation to straighten them out.”
Well, that “something” has already happened. I do believe the worst recession in world history has just occurred and furthermore my generation will probably be paying off our student loans until we are all well past retirement. Nevertheless, according to them, we are oversexed, unfocused, immoral, lazy, apathetic and too technologically obsessed. Of course the list of adjectives could go on and on.
What the generation before us forgets is that they were described the exact same way by the generation before them. They also forget that the “good old days” never existed, people had sex before marriage in the 50s, homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness, and that it was okay for politicians to physically deny someone access to a public university because of their skin color.
Oh and the “good kids” our parents claimed to be 20-30 years ago, well that’s a lie too. The baby boomers forget that while they were growing up they watched an entire racial group of people be unjustly and violently denied basic civil rights by their parents.
Nowadays to our generation this seems absolutely barbaric to the point that one could argue that maybe the generations before us were not the kinder, gentler, and law abiding citizens they claim they were. Every generation waxes then wanes into another and then into another. Every generation believes they are superior to the one that emerges after them. I’m guilty of this as I have extreme prejudice against anyone who doesn’t know what Saved by the Bell was, what the Rugrats was, and basically anyone born after 1995.
I don’t have to tell you that this cycle of judgment will go on as long as new generations are created. I also don’t have to tell you that Generation Y will continue to be a judged by the very generations that we will end up caring for in their old age. So go ahead Generation-X and Baby Boomers, judge a generation coming of age during the biggest technological revolution the world has ever seen.
I invite you to judge a generation with more choices than you could ever dream of. Judge a generation where intense globalization will become the norm and I do mean the absolute norm. Please judge how progressively we treat all of our fellow men and women. Or better yet, please judge us as we clean up the worst economic recession ever seen domestically and internationally that your generation had a hand in creating. So please keep judging because then you will at least be watching as we metaphorically and also quite literally run circles around you.
“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land. And don’t criticize what you can’t understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand, for the times they are a-changing.” – Bob Dylan
Samantha Nelson | Elite.
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