I've given Leonard Pitts a hard time in the past, but when he's good, he's very very good.
In his Dec. 12 column, he laments the generation gap between African Americans of the Rosa Parks era, and those of today's "hip-hop" culture. I'll let Leonard to the talking:
It sometimes feels as if each new crop of black Americans is, in some sense, starting all over again, going out with no tether to the sacrifices that made their lives possible, no recognition of their debt to past and future, no inclination to draw on an inheritance of purpose and of pride.Which is why many of their elders are vexed by them, turn away from them, give up on reaching them. But just whose failure does that represent?
I'm not sure I agree with his implied conclusion, but I do agree with how he defines the problem. Ironically, the problem applies no less to young whites who would rather trash private property in the name of "social activism" than recognize the very real sacrifices that made their freedom to be stupid possible.
It is indeed, a generational thing. As Pitts noted:
Parks became an icon because, faced with a moral challenge, she made a decision.
That's probably about right. The irony is that because America has essentially achieved nearly every goal of human history -- generations free from want, free from disease, but also FREE FROM STRUGGLE -- young people have been alienated from the very things that make up the stuff of life itself. People have an inherent need to struggle, to strive to overcome nature's daily taunts.
The absence of the need for struggle, the absence of challenges, is essentially what has led to the increasing rootlessness of successive generations, especially in the post-WWII era. People have an inherent need for daily challenges; it's what we're evolutionarily adapted for. But in a world where you don't have to bring water from the well, but just turn on the spigot, and you don't have to chop kindlin' wood, but just turn on the stove, that natural daily challenge is absent. Cruising or hanging out at the mall just doesn't satisfy this primitive need.
There is a void in the soul of young people, and all manner of nonsense stands ready to fill it. And what fills it is a sort of nihilism (fed by youthful narcissism) masquerading as struggle. This is what gives us rap, hip-hop, punk, grunge, anarchists, white middle class FTAA protesters, you name it. Not that these art forms lack legitimacy. But young people are searching for a struggle, something to strive for; it is only natural. We know this intuitively. That is why, for example, we send problem kids to boot camp.
But with no real struggle before them, that need for struggle seems to transform itself into nothing better than a gutteral howl.
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