I've been trying to find a way to bring up this post in which the 42-year-old author claims to be "sick of old people" (read: anyone old enough to have had a job for 10 years and qualify for a mortgage). (Via Delaware Liberal)
Ralph Nader's latest "white guilt" comments pushed me over the edge. I'm officially sick of old people.
Now, I'm not exactly young (my driver's license says 42, but I don't believe it because I have absolutely no answers to life, the universe, and everything). I was born after the Boomers, but early enough that I don't necessarily really relate to the Gen Xers. I do, however, stand with Generation X on one thing: white guilt is a stupid and absurd concept in presidential politics.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone under 40 even use the phrase white guilt. Mostly, you hear it from Baby Boomers and older, mostly from people who are just too stuck in some old reality to fathom a legitimate reason people might support a black candidate for office.
I'm not going to say that the younger generation is post-racial or has moved beyond identity politics or anything grand and sweeping like that. There's still work to do, and I don't expect we'll reach any promised land beyond identity politics anytime soon. I do think, however, the younger generation is light years ahead of the Baby Boomers on this issue.
And I do hope, ever so fervently, that old farts will shut their mouths occasionally and listen to their children and grand-children on the issue of race.
I'm the same age as Michelle Obama, so I have a decent idea of the America the Obamas grew up in. There were (and are) still pockets of open racism and considerable racial tension, but mostly, we were the bridge generation that had white friends and black friends and didn't know until we were closer to adulthood that there were those who didn't appreciate that fact. Now, we're raising a generation of kids who are even farther removed from that racism, and that's a good thing.
But how mature is it to say you are "sick of old people"? This is the sort of stupidity that I expect of people unwilling to admit that, for some, the attraction to Barack Obama comes from a sense that we'll never put racism behind us until we elect a black man president. And that sentiment comes largely from white liberals. That sentiment is white guilt, regardless of the name you want to call it. You can dress it up and tell yourself that you just really agree with Barack Obama on the issues (and you'll agree with him next week when he completely flip-flops), but that's just kidding yourself.
But about this young-vs.-old thing. There's a reason that ancient civilizations considered older people wise and gave them a place of honor just for managing to live longer than most people. Experience should actually count for something, because we can hope that watching enough people do stupid things--even well-meant things--can help us avoid doing stupid things.
Take the story about the Obama supporters taking his middle name.
Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.
“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.
With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.
The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago...
Mr. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from a Kenyan father he barely knew, who was born a Muslim and died an atheist. But the name has become a political liability. Some critics on cable television talk shows dwell on it, while others, on blogs or in e-mail messages, use it to falsely assert that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or, more fantastically, a terrorist.
“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.
Yes, this is how we show that a name means nothing. We pretend that if everybody says a name, it has no meaning. Sorry, kids. When I picked out names for my children, it was because those names had particular meaning to me, and I'm sure the same was true of Barack Hussein Obama. And regardless of how many times you tell yourself that it makes no difference, you know it does. That's why Obama hides from Muslims and hides his middle name. But hey, at least it's not like you're piercing something again or getting your 50th tattoo.
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