21st-century problems require a united front. Let’s drop the generational name calling

Among baby boomers, the adage used to be “don’t trust anyone over 30.” For today’s teens and young adults, it’s simply “OK, Boomer,” the verbal equivalent of an eye-roll of exasperation about out-of-touch grandpa who is mystified by his smartphone — or deaf to climate change concerns.

Sometimes, though, “OK boomer” is a little meaner than that. In what The New York Times calls the “meme to merch cycle,” one young entrepreneur plastered the slogan on shirts followed by a directive to boomers to “have a terrible day.”

This sort of intergenerational conflict may be inevitable, but it is deeply flawed.

No generation is monolithic in its beliefs or behaviors. In the 1960s and ‘70s, boomers’ parents often thought the entire generation consisted of feckless libertines who were ruining the country by listening to rock and roll and Motown, not getting haircuts, protesting against racism and war and burning draft cards. Now the young are mad at boomers because the government is run by white male Republican senators who are disinterested in climate change, income inequality, and other issues near to their hearts.

Today, boomers often have stereotypes about the young: they live with their faces in their phones, they don’t vote, they don’t work hard enough, and they take too long to grow up. (It does seem, however, that most older people have given up commenting on tattoos, nose rings and pink hair.)

Younger people – Gen Xers, (born 1965-1979) Millennials, (1980-1994) and Generation Z (1995 to 2015) – certainly have plenty to complain about. The climate is warming, wages are growing far slower than housing and other costs of living, racial justice is lacking, pensions are disappearing, health insurance is still far from universal, college costs are rising, and student debt is overwhelming. And, of course, our national government is a mess.

Just as boomers blamed our parents’ generation for its stultifying conformity, rigid gender roles, homophobia, racism and war, today’s young people blame boomers for all that is wrong in the world.

But this tendency to generalize about whole generations is so seductive we cannot resist the opportunity to mount a defense of boomers – or at least the activist, awake and engaged segment that so upset its parents. Boomers have done some pretty important stuff.

Boomer black youth and their white allies risked beatings and death to register black voters in the South. Boomers helped fight for and win recognition of Native American treaty fishing rights. Boomers helped win respect and union recognition for immigrant farm workers, and fought for black studies programs. Today’s struggles for racial justice and gender equality are waged on a foundation built by boomers – and, of course, by the generations that came before them.

In the 1960s and 70s, boomer women reawakened a long-dormant feminist movement and ended sex-segregated job ads, broke open doors to many professions, won reproductive rights, recognized domestic violence as criminal behavior, and vastly expanded women’s control over their bodies and lives.

Boomers also participated in a national War on Poverty. The cause of reducing economic inequality was closely allied with the civil rights and women’s movements that boomers populated.

Boomers also applied youthful energy to the environmental movement – also built on the shoulders of elders, most notably Rachel Carson. Boomers created and populated the first Earth Day celebrations, campaigned for national legislation such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and made environmental protection a lasting part of the national political agenda.

But no generation sees all its ambitions realized. Another must come along to take up the causes.

The Me Too movement is proof that feminism is not a finished project. So is the absence of universal paid family leave, the unaffordability of quality child care, and the retreat from full reproductive rights. A growing incidence of hate crimes, vast racial inequality in income, and cell phone videos of wildly bigoted behavior provide searing proof that the civil rights movement did not achieve all its goals.

Decades of grotesquely inadequate responses to climate change make clear that the environmental movement has an even steeper mountain yet to climb. And once again, poverty is growing, while the rich rake in more, and more, and more. And there is a clear generational downturn that is crippling the earning capacity of the young.

Every bit of progress on our toughest problems produces backlash and backsliding. When this happens, we need to regroup and renew the struggle to regain ground and move forward again. This requires all of us to think outside the boxes of our generational stereotypes.

The commitment of young and old and everyone in between is needed to overcome the deep divisions that plague our nation, and to get us back on the path to genuine moral progress.