An Open Letter to Cranky Middle-Aged White Women:
WhiteGen X women, I do not understand you. Weren’t we raised by the same people? Didn’t you give me my first beer and my first cigarette? You used to be my cool older cousin and now you’re an angry white woman who can’t deal with anyone younger than you being successful.
Who hurt you?
It’s Wednesday after the Superbowl and people are still talking about the halftime show. One would expect that. I’ve seen a lot of commentary from my feed about the body of 50 Cent. A LOT of talking about how people are focusing on the only yt man taking a knee instead of the black artists. It has been productive and 99.9 percent positive.
Only one person on my feed had the audacity to post negatively about the halftime show. She, a middle-aged angry white woman, posted that she didn’t know who that “kid” was and how he didn’t belong there.
That “kid” was Kendrick Lamar.
Kendrick Lamar who is arguably the best (male) rapper in his particular generation.
Kendrick Lamar who is my same age. (I’m a good 10 tears younger than the woman who posted this but I’m not young.)
Kendrick Lamar who has 13 Grammys, 2 American Music Awards and WHAT ELSE? Oh yeah. A Pulitzer Prize. LITERALLY, the first person to win the Pulitzer Prize for music that was not a jazz or classical artist.
She could have said anything. Like how amazing that we had an entire halftime show with hip hop artists for the first time. Or, Snoop Dogg doing the crip walk and throwing up C’s on national television. Or, celebrating the artistry of a 50-year-old woman being featured as a vibrant, sexy woman in an industry that values youth and youth and more youth.
But instead, she wants to call an accomplished black man, a man who achieved more in his 34 years than she could in 340 years, a “kid”.
And when I called her out? This so-called “progressive feminist”? She blocked me. Frailty, thy name is woman.
I don’t want anyone to think I am being ageist. I am not young. I am also not a hot shot. I am not nearly as accomplished as I should be at this age. I am in my mid-thirties and I am a writer whose writing work consists of creating content for REALLY successful people that don’t have time to create. I am a facilitator. I am a coach. I am an organizer. I spend my time being the hypeman for others and while I don’t mind that, I could definitely be giving myself more of that “hype”. But the point is that I am not mad about any of this. I feel secure in my place in the world. Maybe I am privileged because people still seem to think that Millenials are entitled children so therefore I am tangentially connected to the zeitgeist and therefore somehow matter?
Gatekeeping doesn’t usually phase me. As an autistic person, I am used to being in rooms that do not welcome me or people like me. I spent a lot of time early in my career being terrfied that I would somehow offend people with my presence as if I had nothing to offer. It was after my second nervous breakdown that I realized that if I wanted to be in the room, I was going to ask to be there. If I was told no, I was going to ask why I couldn’t be there. If the explanation made sense, I would usually be okay with it but as someone who is more driven by being unwanted than wanted, I find a special kind of glee in imposing myself. The awkwardness, it fuels me.
I went nontraditional in my educational/work life and started working while I was in college, eventually dropping out. I have been consistently the youngest person in the room at most of my jobs. So these Gen X women and I have been working side by side for nearly two decades. I was the first assistant they ever had. I was the one person in the office that they had seniority over. I got them coffee, I picked up the slack when they were overwhelmed. And I remember when they weren’t welcome in the room. When they were the “kid”.
And now that they are in the position of power, in the rooms where they were once not welcome, they see the people coming up behind them and they are terrified.
And what is insane to me is that I am sure when they were in the “kid” role, they never felt like they would be someone that would belittle or demean someone with ambition, with drive. They thought they would always be welcoming. “There’s room for all of us.”
But now that the time has come, do they remember? Or, do they only remember the time where they felt unwelcome, out of place?
It’s much easier to punch down than up. I am already finding myself in the workplace with people who were born the same year that 9/11 happened. While that is JARRING, I am working to be more mindful about how generational differences can enrich a workplace and an overall culture. And that will likely include figuring out how to make Gen X white women hate me less and maybe one of them can show teach me how to use TurboTax.
