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[No_hite_pls]

Boomers: The Real Greatest Generation

I think this is an interesting look at the baby boomers or my parents and
also why I think it is bad to glorify the past too much.

Who contributed more -- the heroes of World War II or the revelers at Woodstock?
By Leonard Steinhorn
Sunday, February 19, 2006; B03
It makes the headlines nearly every day, and the tone is usually resentful: Beware of those soon-to-retire baby boomers, all 80 million of them, who are about to place a huge burden on the rest of us. The first of this whiny, entitled generation are turning 60 this year, and they'll be demanding even more special treatment in old age than they've gotten the rest of their lives.
But imagine if the generation getting ready to retire wasn't the baby boomers, but the World War II generation -- or the Greatest Generation, as it's popularly lionized. No one would be calling those Americans a burden or a drag. If they were retiring today, we'd be writing columns full of praise for their sacrifice and discussing what our nation owes them and how it's our moral duty to support them.
Why the different attitudes toward these two generations? Why is one idealized as heroic and giving, while the other is disdained as self-indulgent and taking? It's time to reassess. The true test of a generation should be what it's done to make America better. And in that regard, boomers have an important story to tell. It's a story about a more inclusive and tolerant America, about women's equality and men's growing respect for it, about an appreciation for cultural diversity too long denied, about a society that no longer turns a blind eye to prejudice or pollution.
The boomers' problem is not that they haven't accomplished a great deal; it's that we take their accomplishments for granted and don't give them any credit. But if we look more closely at the legacies of both the boomers and their parents, we might see that the boomers are a far more consequential group than many admit. We might see, in fact, that they have advanced American values in ways the Greatest Generation refused to do.
Today, no one questions what the World War II generation gave to America, and that's as it should be. Its members sacrificed their lives and futures to defend our country. They were heroes then, and they deserve our continuing gratitude. But the reality few acknowledge is that, mission accomplished, they returned home to preside, by and large without complaint, over an American society vastly inferior to the one we know today.
Our view of the 1950s is clouded by nostalgia. We have a Norman Rockwell image of that era, one of tight nit neighborhoods and white picket fences. But for too many Americans, this was no golden age. In the storied years of the 1950s, we told women to stay home, blacks to stay separate, Jews to stay inconspicuous, and those who didn't conform or prayed to a different God to feel ashamed and stay silent.
Greatest Generation blacks who fought Hitler were forced to sit behind German POWs at USO concerts, and when they returned home the new suburban neighborhoods -- emblems of the American Dream -- were closed to them. Even baseball great Willie Mays couldn't find a house to buy when the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco in 1957 -- until the mayor intervened. Just as Jews anglicized names and decorated Christmas trees to fit in, blacks tried to straighten their hair and bleach their skin by using fiery, painful chemical products with names such as Black-No-More. For them there was nothing warm or nurturing about that era.
It was a time when men with beards seemed subversive and women in pants were questioned by police, and when the Organization Man ruled the workplace. Children thought to be gay were sent off for psychiatric treatment and even electroshock therapy. As for those who spoke up for the environment, they were irritants in a nation that was on the march and viewed smog alerts and clouds of soot as simply the price of progress.
Women of that era found themselves trapped in an apron. Want ads were segregated by sex -- a practice The Washington Post didn't end until 1971 -- and it wasn't unusual for a description of the perfect "girl" to be "5-foot-5 to 5-foot-7 in heels." Judges ridiculed female attorneys as "lawyerettes" in court. A woman's job didn't count for much, as credit bureaus typically denied women their economic independence.
The Greatest Generation largely accepted and defended this status quo. Even in the 1990s, polls showed Greatest Generation majorities continuing to resist racial intermarriage, working mothers and laws to protect gays from discrimination. Through the late 1980s, a majority of white respondents in national polls even said they would vote for a law allowing a homeowner to refuse to sell his home to a black buyer.
In other words, if most Greatest Generation Americans had their way, American life would have remained frozen in the '50s. They were not the agents of change that built the far more inclusive, tolerant, free and equal America we have today.
That task fell to the boomers, who almost immediately started breaking down the restrictive codes and repressive convictions of the Greatest Generation's era. From the moment pollsters began recording their attitudes in the 1960s, boomers stood diametrically opposed to their elders on the core issues of race, women, religious pluralism, homosexuality and environmental protection. They saw an America that was not living up to its ideals, and they set about to change it.
But this is a story that rarely gets told. In part that's because the media prefer the dramatic or the epic, which leaves out a great deal of social change. In part it's because we remain fixated on the '60s, as if boomer history ended there. Yet nearly four decades have passed since the '60s ended, and the ways in which America has changed are so far-reaching and fundamental that they have transformed how we live as profoundly as any war or New Deal.
Today, we see minorities and women contributing to society in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. Diversity and pluralism are now moral values, bigotry and sexual harassment no longer get a free pass, and ethnic boundaries once considered impermeable are breaking down in media, society and personal relationships. Half of all teens now report dating across racial and ethnic lines -- and 90 percent say their parents have no problem with it.
So natural and comfortable are these new norms that most of us take them for granted, as if it's always been this way. Because we live in a changed America, we tend to forget what it was like before boomers agitated for change.
Boomer-bashing has become a virtual cottage industry. They're labeled "the worst generation." They're accused of infantilism and self-promotion. One Web site described them as "a plague of self-centered locusts."
Part of what drives this vitriol is an implied criticism that boomers are soft and overindulged because they never sacrificed in a Great War or Depression. But millions of boomers fought bravely in a war their parents handed them, and millions more risked arrest, uncertainty and ostracism for protesting what they believed to be the pointlessness and duplicity of that war. There's no reason to believe that boomers wouldn't have fought Hitler as nobly as their parents did, and boomer antiwar protesters said as much at the time, distinguishing between what they saw as the just and necessary war against fascism and the misguided, deceptive and morally ambiguous war in Vietnam.
As for the well-worn condemnation of boomer materialism, the truth is that materialism is nothing new in America, and boomers are far from the first and only generation to face this charge: It was conspicuous consumption in the 1920s and keeping up with the Joneses in the '50s.
Boomers certainly haven't solved all of society's problems, and they've created a few as well. But if we held the World War II generation to the same standard, the word "greatest" would never come to mind. Even if we're not a perfect America today, in so many ways we're a better America. And for that, we owe the baby boomers our thanks.

[jinju]

The boomers are a failed generation. Sorry, but the only thing the boomers will be remembered for is for destroying this planet and passing an ecological disaster onto their kids and grandkids.

[No_hite_pls]

Do you really think any other generation would have done any better?

[jinju]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Each generation has its successes and failures built on the world they inherited from the previous generation. To (overly) praise or blame any generation is silly...although it is always correct to criticize the younger generation so they can learn.

[sojourner1]

I read all of your post OP and found it interesting in that it makes me realize that the boomers did embrace diversity and human rights, but the reason they are downed is that they increased their net wealth by downsizing and outsourcing rather than empowering Americas young adults be industrious, profitable, happy, and successful. The 1950's America part fascinates me too and I believe every word of it. The part about the employment ads being segrated by sex just blew me away. I would guess they were also segrated by race too.

The baby boomers get a bad rap, because they dis empowered Americans young adults due to taking all the financial wealth and then handing it over to the Chinese and the Indians by outsourcing just to increase their own net present value. It's a big rip if you're not inheriting from your baby boomer parent since the executive type of boomer intended to pass down what is being reaped from outsourcing and foreign investing.

They facilitated higher education for a great majority seeking education, something that was highly coveted and usually only achieved by the elite rich whities who could afford to pay for thier young adult kids to attend. The problem lies in the job market and economy is in big trouble due to the baby boomers business decisions and economic policies they set in place. Of course, we look down on them for making the younger generations financially poorer while teaching us that we can achieve great things by getting an education which saddles us down with big student loans and a low paying job market. Even this $30,000 a year job in Korea is very low paying for my qualifications, skills, abilities, and knowledge I spent so many years developing. It's OK to have a $30,000 a year job, but you need to be able to spring your self up the ladder closer to $100,000 a year within 10 years of graduation. The baby boomers who changed the world did all this with intention that all of us gen x and gen y would be receiving a big inheritance as a result of the baby boomers success and all would be well. This just istn't the case for my baby boomer parents who were both disabled all their adult lives and died poor.

The business part is why many look down on the baby boomer generation. They achieved great things, but you (young adult) must be positioned properly to be the next in line to get that big money many of them are sitting on. This is why business schools today teach you how to invest money and be a CEO rather than a common manager, because the opportunities are in using your baby boomer inheritance to achieve even greater things on the principals they established.

[andrew]

.....

[Kuros]

[Tony_Balony]

The Baby Boomers are pretty awful.

In public they screamed about discrimination at others.
In private they sent the jobs overseas to improve their quarterly reports.

Guess who didn't get those jobs?

[Kuros]

[cbclark4]

You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.
Charles Manson

[Ya-ta Boy]

If us Boomers are the current dominant group and are running the show, then someone should mention this:

GOP front runners:
Guiliani (Italian-American: We haven't had one of those)
Romney (Mormon: We haven't had one of those)
Thompson (The great white hope? )

Democratic front runners:
Clinton (woman: We haven't had one of those)
Obama (black: We haven't had one of those)

I'd say things have changed big time on our watch. And maybe the most remarkable of all: No one much is pitching a fit about it. I'd say: Well done, America.

[yushin]

we feasted on the banquet...those who follow will be left with the crumbs...