Do the Generational Beefs Really Exist? And Are Black Folks Part of the Fight?

The war of words between Baby Boomers and the younger generations is like a never-ending wrestling match.

This tussle is seen frequently in the work place, where Baby Boomers and those generations slighter in age clash over work styles and differing approaches to life. Baby Boomers complain that among other things, their more junior competitors are lazy, too sensitive, and believe they should get credit just for showing up for their jobs. While younger workers say that Baby Boomers are totally inept when it comes to using information technology, social media, and almost anything modern. Baby Boomers are workaholics who misunderstand the meaning, or respect for work-life balance, say the less ripened employees.

In the years ahead, these generational differences may begin to play out on the national political stage, as older folk move out and the more contemporary groups run for national elected offices. In previous years, Baby Boomers dominated Congress and the presidency. The last four U.S. Presidents, including the current one, are Baby Boomers. This age cohort had been the majority of U.S. Senators and Representatives, but that is starting to change.

Current 119th Congress members are skewing younger. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, the median age of House Representatives is 57.5 years. The median age for senate members is 64.7, but the median age for the 11 newly elected senators is 53.9. Included in these numbers, four of the 11 senators are in their forties.

For representatives, the median age of 48 of the 61 of representatives coming in as freshmen is 50.2. Compare this to the previous 118th Congress, the median age for first-time representatives was 46.3.

As Congressional committees hold hearings on a range of national concerns over the economy, climate change, health care, and other pressing matters, the younger legislators, like many generations before, might scapegoat their legislative elders. Whatever is wrong in the nation right now, has been a go-to for some. Blame the Baby Boomers.

“It’s all their fault.”

During the last six years, an increasing number of print and broadcast news, along with social media platforms, have surprisingly targeted one generation as the source of all that ails us: Baby Boomers, people born between 1946 and 1964.

Baby Boomers are said to be roundly despised by junior cohorts such as Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980); Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996); and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012). According to a Yahoo article by writer Danielle Sham, the post-Boomers indict Baby Boomers for everything from global warming to affordable housing shortages.

Take Bruce Gibney, a 49-year-old Generation X venture capitalist whose wealth stems from investing early in Facebook and PayPal. In 2017, he wrote a book entitled “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America.” Gibney accuses Baby Boomers of causing “slowing economic growth, decelerating innovation, tremendous fiscal imbalances,” and other issues.

He believes the “feud” between American Boomers and the youngsters began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the vaccine was first made available to elders. Age-related weak immune systems made them more at-risk for catching the deadly virus. “It just sort of encapsulates the whole sense of unfairness, where it’s always the Boomers first and their kids last,” Gibney asserted in a 2021 “PBS Newshour” segment.

At the same time, Gibney’s ire against the senior population is not extended to those who are Black. “I excluded Black Americans from my definition of Baby Boomers,” Gibney responded to Ark Republic in an email. “[T]heir experiences and expectations were so radically different from those of the white, fairly middle-class Boomer majority (which were remarkably homogen[e]ous, as far as big, dispersed populations go).”

Gibney goes on. “And because my argument was in large part about how white Boomers gained and then manipulated the levers of power to their benefit, my analysis didn’t really apply to Black Boomers at the national level – though, of course, then-majoritarian Boomer policy had plenty of consequences for Black Americans (and most other non-Boomer Americans, including all future Americans).”

Cosigning Gibney’s point is Millennial author Jill Filipovic, 41, a former columnist for The Guardian and an attorney. “[He] put into great context how the narratives around Boomers are really about white Boomers, and don’t fit