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Rinku responds
By Rinku Sen
Apr 16th 2008
at 1:54 pm EDT
I appreciate Kay's response to my post and no apology is required on the gender front. I will cop to the fact that the headline asserts something about the Millennial Generation that I didn’t intend, although I can’t resist revealing that it was written by a 25-year-old ARC staffperson who grew up in Mississippi.
My post reflects on a very specific conversation. I am totally aware that Millennials bring an immense energy that is generating new organizing, mobilization and cultural models. To ignore that would make me, well, pretty dumb as well as blind. I was actually surprised to encounter this feeling in a 22-year-old, in part because there’s such exciting stuff going on -- much, much more of it than there was when I was 22.
When my colleague asked me why I thought he felt this way, I actually tried to answer that question, to understand him both politically and emotionally. We might not agree on the reasons, but we shared them and I hope we’ll continue to do so. And look, the guy’s not just disaffected with the stuff I’ve created, but with all of politics, which I would bet includes the things other Millennials are doing. He’s a smart, hard working, conscious man – it seems to me that characterizing his disaffection as “unrepresentative” of the larger generation is a little disingenuous, and that he’s expressing a feeling that Millennials themselves need to deal with. What are you going to do with your own disaffected people?
Although he’s a little young to feel this way, the desire to be effective isn’t a bad thing. That’s where innovation comes from. My point is that when he finds that thing, he’s going to need the stamina and the community required to make it work. It doesn’t matter whether your project has been done a million times or never before, engagement takes staying power because it’s hard. We need to be able to keep going when even our own work reveals its shortfalls, as it inevitably will. In my experience, people of any age who have a mostly theoretical understanding of social change, who are newer to the actual process, often find themselves shocked and deflated by the gap between their ideals and reality. That gap always exists because human beings are flawed. Sometimes the ideals themselves need adjusting; other times, the reality does. When confronted with the gap, we have to make decisions. I believe that most lasting commitments are made instinctively, from the heart. At a certain point, one just has to surrender to the project of social change. And it’s not always going to be satisfying.
Rinku Sen has a rather odd post on RaceWire. She* titles it "Dear Generation Disaffected:" which I guess includes me. She takes the anecdotal evidence of his intern, who said she couldn't find a place "to contribute." Sen then dives in to trying to figure out why this generation feels disaffected. But her post isn't very specific. Is she talking about all young people? Is she talking about young people of color? Or simply young men, like this intern? Is she talking about those seeking a career in nonprofits? It's unclear.
Thomas Friedman wrote the now-famous "Generation Q" column for the New York Times. Instead of trying to inspire a new generation to political action, he spent the entire column attacking us for lazing on the couch and plugging iPod buds into our ears. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers think because they don't see an exact replication of what they did when they were young, something must be drastically, desperately wrong.
Sen didn't stop to think that this generation isn't a monolithic group. Since she left out details about the intern, I can't speak for him, but I tend to doubt young activists, organizers, or budding young media stars that pepper our generation feel disaffected. As for the rest of us, it's not hard to figure out why some of us feel frustrated: we're facing unprecedented piles of student loans, a failing economy that makes many college grads wonder if they'll ever find a job, and opposition to a war that shows no signs of stopping. Indeed, it's hard to deny that things are bad. But then, things are bad for everyone.
Furthermore, Sen claims little responsibility for what she ascribes to be disaffection. In fact, she even says, "[My intern's] program requires a mentor, and I was it." It's an attitude of reluctance. In fact, until recently, progressives have been largely unwilling to pay much attention to young people. Thanks to "Generation Me" of which Sen is a part, young people have mostly gotten to where they are today without any real form of mentorship at any real level. This is a trend I've noticed in the generational divide among feminists. There are young women that are willing to take up the label and the cause, but instead of getting praise and mentorship from second-wave feminists, they are often attacked for their choice of lifestyle, profession, or even presidential candidate.
But the reality is that despite the debtloads, poor economy, and lack of mentorship, young people are doing good. I work for an organization called Campus Progress that works for this sole purpose -- to give resources to young people that want to work on making a difference. There are superdelegates that can't even drink legally yet, and young media stars like many of the people that I know here in D.C. We're hard at work making sure college loans ratchet down to affordability, getting other young people to vote in the upcoming election, and starting multi-billion dollar websites like Facebook.
So perhaps I should open a letter back up to those that are in the upper brackets of the generation groups. Instead of whining about how we don't do anything, why don't you open your eyes and give us a hand on what we're already working on?
*I originally referred to Sen as a he. My sincere apologies for the error.
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!
My post reflects on a very specific conversation. I am totally aware that Millennials bring an immense energy that is generating new organizing, mobilization and cultural models. To ignore that would make me, well, pretty dumb as well as blind. I was actually surprised to encounter this feeling in a 22-year-old, in part because there’s such exciting stuff going on -- much, much more of it than there was when I was 22.
When my colleague asked me why I thought he felt this way, I actually tried to answer that question, to understand him both politically and emotionally. We might not agree on the reasons, but we shared them and I hope we’ll continue to do so. And look, the guy’s not just disaffected with the stuff I’ve created, but with all of politics, which I would bet includes the things other Millennials are doing. He’s a smart, hard working, conscious man – it seems to me that characterizing his disaffection as “unrepresentative” of the larger generation is a little disingenuous, and that he’s expressing a feeling that Millennials themselves need to deal with. What are you going to do with your own disaffected people?
Although he’s a little young to feel this way, the desire to be effective isn’t a bad thing. That’s where innovation comes from. My point is that when he finds that thing, he’s going to need the stamina and the community required to make it work. It doesn’t matter whether your project has been done a million times or never before, engagement takes staying power because it’s hard. We need to be able to keep going when even our own work reveals its shortfalls, as it inevitably will. In my experience, people of any age who have a mostly theoretical understanding of social change, who are newer to the actual process, often find themselves shocked and deflated by the gap between their ideals and reality. That gap always exists because human beings are flawed. Sometimes the ideals themselves need adjusting; other times, the reality does. When confronted with the gap, we have to make decisions. I believe that most lasting commitments are made instinctively, from the heart. At a certain point, one just has to surrender to the project of social change. And it’s not always going to be satisfying.