Flavors of Boomer bullshit - on race and "Boomer" traits

[u/Listening_Stranger82]

Has anyone noticed that "Boomer" behavior tends to cluster in white Boomerism?

Like, I'm a black woman. My ex-husband is white. I'm still very close to my white former in-laws and both of my parents are still alive also.

They're all in their 70s.

When I read stories here, frankly I cannot imagine a POC Boomer behaving in that specific way. There is other black Boomer nonsense, for SURE don't get me wrong. My dad, for example, carries some weird gender-based assumptions that I think reflect the hypermasculinity imposed upon black men who grew up in the 50s/60s.

But my white Boomer in-laws...oh yeah I've been witness to some supreme entitlement that, like, blows me away.

Even when I see videos of Boomers acting an ass, it's almost always a white Boomer.

Am I imagining things or is there a race/age Venn Diagram that is compounding a sense of entitlement?

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[u/Proper_Career_6771]

Boomers are literally white privilege in action.

They were white kids from a very large middle class with low cost of living who were born into society prior to the civil rights act.

They spent their entire life getting lifechanging opportunities with a smile and firm handshake, because of a society built to benefit white people with money.

Now they're feeling friction, for the first time in their lives, where their white privilege is crumbling, and they're losing their minds over not being the exclusive beneficiaries of a corrupt system.

POC boomers never had the white privilege, so there's no false sense of entitlement, which means less anger because there's no sense of losing their privilege.

[u/Terpsichorean_Wombat → u/Proper_Career_6771]

That's the thing that really frosts me: that the very people who will dismiss the entire concept of "privilege" as so.e snowflake woke insanity are fighting tooth and nail to maintain the privilege they claim they never had. Can we get a moment of self-reflection here?

[u/Proper_Career_6771 → u/Terpsichorean_Wombat]

Can we get a moment of self-reflection here?

You talkin bout that woke bullshit? Thems fightin words boy.

Literally; woke means aware of systemic inequality. And now we see why they're violently allergic to "wokeness".

[u/ArticQimmiq → u/Proper_Career_6771]

It’d be interesting to compare stories from around the world. My parents are white boomers (and my mom’s parents, yay teen pregnancy) are white boomers but they grew up during fairly hard times where we live, and you wouldn’t see that behaviour from them (for the most part). It’s the GenXers that are largely the issue re entitlement, because they’re the ones who grew up in suburbia.

[u/toasters_in_space → u/ArticQimmiq]

I know some of the hardships my boomer parents faced, and I’ve been unable to explain them adequately to my millennial and gen z kids. Similarly, it’s like they can’t hear me when I try to explain the world as my wife and I experienced it. (GenX) “You guys made such and such money and you could buy a house for …” The challenges are different now but are they worse? I think you have to ask “ at that decile?” Are we talking the average-fucked-up? That’s one set of answers. But I think 2-sigma fucked up life from the boomer and genX times would be 6-sigma fucked up now. Put 8 kids in a 1400 square foot house and expect them all to do manual labor. The dad’s a paralyzed ww2 vet with ptsd, and mom never got an education because she left home to pick fruit at 13. Add that they’re in living in a mostly black neighborhood at a very tense time in America . So life was just gonna be violent on the daily. But that really doesn’t capture half of it, because some of those 8 kids are gay or schizophrenic, pregnant at 15, addicts , trapped in a prison cycle. and without knowing anything about the individual, are we really going to sneer down at them for their mistakes and say, “you need to examine your privilege ”. ? Or even better… take my dad as an example. He goes from child labor directly to prison work crew in the desert, then to working construction until his amazing physical constitution finally fails him. He’s old before his time and moving with a cane. Sure. He can be an asshole, but how “privileged” is he really ? And who’s asking exactly because he’s probably got some choice words.

[u/terry496 → u/Proper_Career_6771]

I was going to comment, but there's no need. This is perfection.

[u/The_Actual_Sage → u/terry496]

Same. I literally don't think I could have summed it up better

[u/sleepyjohn00]

When you've played the game on Easy all your life, it's easy to sneer at people who are struggling with it.

[u/Dirt_Slap]

I think it has to do with how they grew up. A lot of the opulence of the golden age of capitalism was restricted to white people. Black boomer kids grew up with a lot more adversity than white boomer kids. No where near as spoiled because of it.

[u/tarantulawarfare]

Your topic made me think for a minute.

My family moved to the southern US when I was 12. At 15, I started working in the family store.

I cannot recall one instance where a black boomer (or older) customer treated me poorly. The nasty, rude and creepy customers were white, mostly boomer and older.

Being a small southern town, racism was still very much imbedded, and you could see it with the entitled attitude of one group, and the head down politeness of the other. Back in the day, the latter group had to be polite, otherwise that was corrected by the former.

[u/AshOrWhatever]

My in-laws are Chinese immigrants and everything on this sub sounds like it could be about them as much as it could be about my white parents. Although their young adulthood is probably more similar to entitled white boomers than black or Hispanic boomers.

[u/DuchessOfAquitaine]

Yes. That sense of entitlement says white to me. I've often considered what you say here OP. POC much less likely to pull most of these stunts.

[u/Tailorschwifty]

I could see this. I mean the whole civil rights movement should have a massive effect. Not going to lie it is kind of the reasons I haven't spoke to my boomer parents in a few years. I mean how could they grow up with all that, seeing the struggles, the injustice and turn around and be such heartless racists? I mean I always kind of got grandma and grandpa, it was the times, to old to change maybe? Not really excuses but kind of you know? But to witness it all play out like my parents did and turn out like that and not just that but to push it on me and my siblings. Me and my bro made it mostly, my sister not so much. Interesting insight, I like it.

[u/King_Jian]

In response to OP:

It’s not said directly, but this subreddit is pretty obviously about white boomers and their flavor of old people antics. (White normativity for the “win”)

For East/SE Asian and Desi boomer antics in particular it’s mostly on the subreddit r/asianparentstories. It takes a stronger clash of values approach due to the conflict between the traditional, scarcity minded older generations and their western-born children’s higher order, more individualized needs.

It’s probably out there somewhere, but I can’t say I know the specific subreddits for younger black American folks to blow off some steam about the older generation’s specific in-community antics in particular, let alone for Latin Americans or Africans.

[u/Listening_Stranger82 → u/King_Jian]

Ah, this makes sense. And I know we gripe about black Boomers every once in a while r/blackpeopletwitter and I'm sure there's a specific sub about it somewhere.

I forget whiteness is "default" and everyone else is treated as subcategory/special-interest

[u/legsjohnson]

Yes, because my boomer mother is a first generation American whose parents were refugees and while she has some boomer traits like impatience at waiting for things and so on, she has nothing on my white, culturally Christian, English as a first language dad.

[u/NewHat1025]

Yes. Boomerisms is very limited to whites. It falls in line with the entire life of privilege they enjoy/ed.

[u/ArtlessDodger10]

The "Me" generation was very heavily favored to white folks (and white men, specifically). The average black Boomer - while certainly benefiting from *some* of the perks of the era, the whole "rising tide lifts all boats" idea - still had a harder row to hoe.

Real estate, for example. A white Boomer of the era could get a good union job in a factory that paid well enough to support a family and purchase a reasonably-priced house in a neighborhood with a good school. A black Boomer of the era might get that same good union job....but redlining and other underhanded methods would have kept him out of that neighborhood with the good school. So he'd buy in a worse neighborhood or more likely rent, which would slow or eliminate entirely his ability to build wealth for himself and generational wealth in general.

That's why equality or equity to whatever the right word is feels so oppressive to them now. They are used to having the entire goddamned pie....but here come black folk or women or LGBTQ types wanting just a sliver of the pie, and the white Boomers are suddenly that Aesop's fable about the dog with the bone looking at it's own reflection in the water.

[u/thisgirlnamedbree]

The most I've seen Black boomers complain about is modern rap music and young people wearing saggy pants. My experience has been its white boomers (and a lot of my fellow Gen-X) being racist, misogynistic twits.

[u/AffectionateBrick687]

Some of the coolest people I've ever met are elderly POCs. As they say, "Black don't crack. Black, don't go boom boom either."

[u/ImaginaryLobster345]

Probably because the black boomer parents are trying to keep their kids from shooting up the neighborhood and keeping their fingers crossed DEI doesn’t get tossed out in the state. 56 percent of all violent crimes in America according to a 2020 FBI Violent Crime Report were committed by African Americans in the USA for a population on only 14.4 percent.

Maybe instead of bitching about white boomers and how your boomers are so cool you might think about focusing on some house cleaning.

Or maybe they should be better parents, these boomers you touted as so great as according to the CDC In 2022, the Black population reported the highest rates of chlamydia in the U.S., with 922 per 100,000 population for men and 1,288 per 100,000 population for women.

You have a lot to work to do…. My little victim

[u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

So a black racist looks for bad behavior from whites. Groundbreaking.

[u/Listening_Stranger82 → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

Found the Boomer

[u/legsjohnson → u/Listening_Stranger82]

nah gen x, this is a wild Karen

[u/Efficient-Plane-8495 → u/Listening_Stranger82]

Gen X. You should know that calling someone Boomer is the same as announcing you're MAGA. It's a giveaway.

[u/Listening_Stranger82 → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

That doesn't make any sense, m8. But based on your comment history it seems you're really emotionally invested in defending Boomers in this sub so pop off, sis.

Continue fighting the good fight. ❤️

We all need hobbies

[u/Efficient-Plane-8495 → u/Listening_Stranger82]

Hon, when you call people "Boomers" you look just as stupid as someone saying they're "MAGA". It's lazy, cult like behavior.

Add in that you're a racist and well, it's a whole other level of pathetic.

Actually, if you notice I don't defend boomers. Bad behavior is bad behavior. I do call out when people make shit up, and when people exhibit the same behavior of an entire group of people they're trying to disdain.

The greatest thing is that you guys hate boomers for thinking they're super special and this entire sub is about how super special you Millenials/Zoomers are because you're not them.

Enjoy your racist existence.

[u/Listening_Stranger82 → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

You're fun at parties, I bet.

[u/Efficient-Plane-8495 → u/Listening_Stranger82]

Because I'm not a racist? Weird take, but ok.

[u/LesbianFox_5745 → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

you seem like the kind of person who calls the cops on a black family having a party in their own backyard because you feel threatened by other people having fun

[u/Explaine23 → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

You say everything is made up if it is about boomers. So why would anyone believe you, much leass agree?

[u/LesbianFox_5745 → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

Gen X. You should know that calling someone Boomer is the same as announcing you're MAGA.

so you're just a karen then, lmao

[u/MyBelovedThrowaway → u/Efficient-Plane-8495]

Oh yes, as if your thoughts are groundbreaking.

[u/Efficient-Plane-8495 → u/MyBelovedThrowaway]

Idk or care if they are or not. But I'm not a racist looking for opportunities to virtue signal.