Read this article, “Has Gen Y Transcended Race,” in its entirety by going to TheDailyVoice.com:
Has Gen-Y transcended race?
G’Ra Asim | Posted August 15, 2008 10:25 AM
Race: the final frontier. Or is it? The popular conception is that for us Millenials (Americans born between 1982 and 2003), racial divisions are but a thing of the past, a vestige of an era that belonged to our parents and grandparents.
Unquestionably the advances in race relations from the civil rights movement and the gradual but significant steps toward racial tolerance that followed have shaped a context for Gen-Y that is considerably more racially and ideologically diverse. But the currents of bias and division that fueled the conundrums of the past have truthfully only cloaked themselves in subtler, more nuanced garbs, and as such, require a far warier and sophisticated frame of mind to navigate them successfully.
I once had a history teacher who expressed nostalgia for the days of the Cold War, if for no other reason, he argued, than for the fact that he was wholly confident that the Americans were good guys at that point, and that the Soviets were clearly and invariably villainous. Since then, he said, international conflicts have been decidedly less black and white, and which side to pick in a given scenario is much harder to figure.
Though the man in question was a baby boomer, his analysis struck me, ironically, as fitting for Generation Y’s relationship with race. Where our parents may have been comfortably up in arms in the face of rampant but apparent and overt racial discrimination, Gen Y’s burden is in many ways compounded by the complexity of mitigating factors like political correctness and cultural miscegenation.
Where our predecessors’ obligation to social justice and courses of action were equally urgent and obvious, for those of us coming of age today, the necessity to act is challenged by the fact that our prospective enemies look quite a bit like our friends.
Read the rest of this insightful piece by going to TheDailyVoice.com.
Comment(s)
Hi, Mark –
Thanks for your comment! While I respect your point of view and what seems to be a focus on more practical approaches to improving the lives of African Americans, I think it’s imperative to develop theory. Indeed, even if we were to agree that Cosby provides all the solutions to improve Black life, no one would begin to implement his strategies without first understanding and accepting the theoretical basis of his plan.
We’ve got to move our minds, and our behinds will follow.
Joy!
Comment(s)
Thanks for your kind words about the site, Mark. Glad it helps you get your day started. 🙂
I hear you completely on the library. Enough studies have been done that prove one significant difference between higher achieving students and lower achieving students is that those young people who do well come from print rich home environments: they see their parent(s)/guardian(s) read and they are read to every day until they become independent readers themselves.
In my elementary school, we had Library Class every week. We learned the Dewey Decimal System, applied for school library cards, and checked out and returned library books.
Wouldn’t it be great if, given the paucity of print rich home environments among some students, all elementary schools provided this opportunity to our children? Aren’t our tax dollars supposed to help ensure the public schools produce thinking, literate citizens? If regular library attendance is such a no-brainer, why don’t all American schools provide it?
And this is where I quarrel with Cosby. His rhetoric blames the dispossessed without – and this is key – without holding our inadequate system of public education and other crucial social institutions (like health care and business/corporations) equally responsible for their role in shaping these community and national realities.
Should folk take responsibility for their children’s access to books and learning? Yes. Should the rest of us also share the blame for the lost potential among so many of our beautiful children? Yes.
I guess I’m a bit of a DuBoisian. I think that freeing folks’ minds – developing the tools to create a critical analysis of the conditions that have led to dispossession among certain peoples – is key to our liberation. Those tools, of course, are available (for free!) at the library.
Joy!