Social activism defines boomers and zoomers. Can we find common ground in history?

The end of this month will mark 50 years since the end of the 1960s. I’m currently taking a history course focused intensively on the year 1968, inspired by the historical research I conducted in Oxford last semester, and I’ve just switched one of my majors to history.

At the same time we’re seeing the rise of “OK, Boomer,” a meme used to deride baby boomers — and thinkpieces written by boomers in response to it.

Somehow, the convergence of these three things feels, well, timely.

Boomers were mostly coming of age during the 1960s, a time of huge social change and incredible anti-racist and anti-war activism. My generation is coming of age now, during a very similar time — but replace the anti-war sentiment with the urgency of climate change.

The intergenerational hostility is hard to ignore. It certainly goes both ways. I think there is a lot of anger in my generation because we feel that we have been set up to fail, but through the study of history, we can learn that this feeling is inextricably woven into our history and selves.

In one section of my class, we studied the Students for a Democratic Society, whose message is also timely. Their Port Huron Statement opens with the quote, “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

I’m in a similar position now, and realizing that this quote — part of a statement that literally generated a social movement — actually transcends generational boundaries.

The Students for a Democratic Society dared to imagine a better world. Their statement gave people permission to be hopeful and imaginative again. That was taken from the youth of the ‘60s in the same way that it’s been taken from us — for them in the guise of the Vietnam War, for us in the existential threat of climate change.

Somehow, though, our generations are still missing each other when we try to communicate. The lapses in generational memory go both ways. Embracing our similarities is tough — it requires an empathetic historical understanding.

I challenge the rest of Generation Z to think critically about the historical contributions of boomers; and I also call upon boomers to remember who they were at our age and consider the various lenses we are viewing the world from. (We’re going to have to live — or die — with climate change, for starters.)

We can trace so many social movements back to the ‘60s and we owe the older generations a debt of gratitude and compassion. But understand our frustration when those generational differences lead to hostile interactions. (Talk to any Gen Z customer service worker and they’ll have horror stories about rude and dismissive older customers).

I am not encouraging my fellow Gen Zers to blithely accept all boomers and not think critically about the things they’ve done. Even the boomers in the Port Huron statement argued for critical thinking.

But many of the public figures who I grew up idolizing, and activists who I have come to admire over the past few years, were or are boomers: Tom Hayden, Bob Moses, Elaine Brown to name a few.

There are lots of good boomers who are doing important things today. Boomers are our politicians, our teachers, and our activists, and it is worth listening to them.

After all, someday the “zoomers” (a new nickname for Gen Z) will replace the boomers — that is, if climate change doesn’t put a stop to this whole human generation thing entirely.