Gen Y is not the first post racial generation
Posted by Cassandra | Filed under Uncategorized
In doing research for my posts at the TalentEgg blog, I often come across articles that have nothing to do with student and new grad careers. There is much discussion, especially by Baby Boomers, about what it means to be part of Gen Y and how the older generations can come to understand us.
Today I found a great post by Adam Singer over at The Future Buzz in which he discusses the most common myths about Gen Y from a Gen Y perspective — a phenomenon that is less common that you’d think.
I agree with most of what he says, more or less. However, his statement that “Gen Y is colorblind, race blind and open to all lifestyle choices” pushed me to finally write about this idea — this question, really — that has been popping up in Gen Y blogs all year:
Is Generation Y the first colour blind, post racial, super accepting, unbigoted generation in the history of humanity?
Gen Y is the first generation for which this question could be asked with sincerity. It’s an important one, but it was probably brought on by the support by young people of Barack Obama during the election. Especially young, relatively wealthy white people who say they were so inspired by him.
I’m not American, but I’m a young, middle-class white woman and I was inspired by him. I stayed up to watch Obama win and I got tears in my eyes and goosebumps on my skin. Similar to Ryan Healy, “it was never about race. It was about hope and change and the future of our country.”
But it doesn’t mean we can’t see his, or anyone else’s, skin colour and everything that goes along with it.
Racialization still exists in our generation alongside sexism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia despite Gen Y being more racially and culturally mixed, more exposed to other races and cultures through media, and less inclined to think it’s okay to hold people back based on pre-determined factors such as skin colour, gender or sexuality.
As Saaret Yoseph points out at The Root, “… diversity doesn’t necessarily equate to cultural understanding. Gen Y’ers often deal with race in an overt, in-your-face manner through jokes, stereotypical references and cultural tourism.”
It’s understandable that we’re not exactly sure how to deal with race — things aren’t as clear cut as they used to be in North America. There are many different experiences, skin colours, cultures to take into consideration, not just black and white. And probably none of our peers, nor most of their parents, have experienced the kind of violence and discrimination non-white Americans faced in previous generations.
Image credit: thanasim25Barack Obama is a good example of this. He is The First Black President even though his mother is white and his father is simply African and not African-American. Due to America’s continued history of racialization based on the one-drop rule, he’s black. But we know he’s actually multiracial and he doesn’t really fit into the stereotypical black male caricature so familiar in pop culture. What does that mean for him and everyone else?
I don’t know yet. But I know that in order to find out we can’t label ourselves, or allow others to label us, “colour blind” or “post racial” or ignorant to any other differences between us. The conversation has to continue. It’s not good enough to just not hate others anymore — although there is still plenty of hatred in my generation.
We have to figure out where our differences come from, what they mean in relation to the current power structure in our society and how we can help each other try to understand them. Not understanding is very different from not wanting to understand.
So while Gen Y probably isn’t the first post racial generation, we may be the first generation truly willing to understand what it means to be something other than what we are and to understand why these labels and categories hold such value in our society, especially as we become increasingly multiracial, multicultural and nonreligious.
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