Waking Up White Chapter 4: Talking about My Generation

What were some of the major economic, political, demographic, and pop culture trends from ten years before your birth until age twenty? How did they show up in your life? How do you think they influenced your beliefs?

Trying to draw a direct line between global events and my personal development seemed boring and impossible—until I turned to my trusty friend the Internet and googled “characteristics of gen x”!

Suddenly I could see myself in more than a few of them. Two quotes stood out to me.

“[Gen Xers’] perceptions are shaped by growing up having to take care of themselves early and watching their politicians lie and their parents get laid off.”[1] This described my experience perfectly.

“Generation Xers were children during a time of shifting societal values.”[2] In retrospect, the effects of this really can’t be overstated.

There are tons of resources on the Internet that will list your generation’s characteristics—try it! It’s super fun, sort of like those “What word best describes your personality?” quizzes that bounce around Facebook. Of the dozens of words used to describe the group of people I grew up with, here are the main ways I believe I’m just like the rest of Gen X:

1. Suspicious of Authority

• “Latchkey kids,” we grew up unsupervised for vast swaths of time while our parents were at work
• US culture shifted from “kid-centered” to “adult-centered,” and divorce rates increased
• We witnessed some scandals that weakened our beliefs in authority, for example Watergate and Clinton’s impeachment hearings
• The fall of apartheid, communism and the Berlin Wall were wonderful, of course, but these victories were too dang long in coming
• The AIDS epidemic highlighted that adults had no clue what was going on
• Seeing Rodney King get beaten, and then the cops get off free and clear, made us even more cynical

2. Individualistic

• Again, with our parents at work, we had to take care of ourselves
• The faltering economy meant we couldn’t trust anyone to help us
• Women joined the workforce in large numbers, proving to me that a girl could grow up to be self-sufficient
• As a result of all these factors, we don’t like being told what to do or believe (ask my friends if that can be true about me, hahaha!)

3. Tolerant

• Television shows featuring Black families were insanely popular: The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Family Matters
• Music (alternative, grunge, hip-hop, and rap) shaped us in powerful and lasting ways; our musicians were diverse and thanks to MTV we knew it
• At the time, Gen X was the most ethnically diverse generation ever
• As stated before, we grew up in a time of shifting societal values—the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement—and the instigators were our parents! Our formative years were spent living the results of integration and Title IX
• Over 60 percent of Generation X attended college, and higher education exposed us to diverse cultures, people, experiences, and thinking

Hey! That sounds pretty good! I like being a Gen Xer! Good job us! It would be easy to say, “See! I’m tolerant! I can’t be racist!” In fact, “In the 1990s…Gen Xers were ‘by any measure the least racist of today’s generations’.”[3]

But even as a Gen Xer, even in liberal Seattle, I was plenty naïve. For instance, I had no idea that the crack epidemic of my era affected primarily minorities. I didn’t know that people who are born into poverty tend to stay in poverty, and pass it onto their children. I didn’t know that this inequality mostly impacts people of color. I didn’t know Black children are more likely to be identified as needing special education services than white children. And, while I was deeply disturbed by the Rodney King trial, I chalked it up to “the system can’t be trusted.” I had no idea that some of us could trust it far less than others.

For some other perspectives, please check out Di Brown’s post here and Stephen Matlock’s here. My first blog post in the series can be found here. And, as always, Waking up White by Debby Irving is an amazing resource.

 

[1] “Generational Differences Chart.” West Midland Family Center, West Midland Family Center, http://www.wmfc.org/uploads/GenerationalDifferencesChart.pdf.

[2] “Generation X.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X.

[3] “Generation X.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X.

*I changed the name of this chapter from “Optimism” because the chapter is about being shaped by generational forces; optimism was the author’s own personal response to events as she grew up.