"What did we Accomplish in the Sixties?"

[1monster]

Yesterday, I read, and responded to a post in GDP where the OP suggested that everything wrong in the world was the fault of the Baby Boomers... you know, the "ME" generation who did nothing to better the world and thought only of themselves.

Today, just by chance, I came across this mini essay by author Katherine Kerr. I think it offers a good rebuttal to the young woman who made the post. It also serves as a reminder to all of that, despite television sitcoms to the contrary, the fifties were not a wonderful place, with liberty and justice for all and that the sixties, (the Boomers ME generation decade) brought about great, wonderful, and needed changes.

Of course, when the sixties were over, everything was not perfect and even without the neocons pulling us backwards, we still would have a long way to go, but we can be proud of what was accomplished. And we can use it as proof that WE can change things for the better.

http://www.deverry.com/thesixties.html

Why do you think nothing concrete and lasting happened out of the 60s? Lots of people have been saying this lately, and I can't help feeling that the changes were so profound and total that no one remembers that there were changes! The 50s, my friends, happened in a different country than this one. We did not get everything we wanted, no. The world is not perfect now, and is that why some of us think we accomplished nothing?

Consider: in the 60s, the Civil Rights movement brought about the end of segregation and a raft of anti-discrimination laws, culminating in the Johnson administration's Civil Rights Act, one of the most far-reaching pieces of law ever enacted. Local governments also produced laws against discrimination in housing, jobs, schooling. Even leisure activities -- I remember a time when non-whites couldn't enter most restaurants, go to Disneyland, or use the same beaches as whites. Mixed race couples were harassed everywhere they went unless they lived in Hawai'i. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Then there's the Women's Movement, which had its roots in the 60s though it flowered in the early 70s. Equal pay for equal work -- I remember when "Help Wanted" ads came in two columns, male and female. The female jobs always paid less: waitresses less than waiters, secretaries less than administrative assistants, on and on. Women had no control over their own bodies -- contraception depended on a man's willingness to use a condom, and most weren't willing. No legal abortion. Doctors who paid little attention to female complaints but lots to male illnesses. Natural childbirth wasn't an option, and women were kept from breastfeeding even if they wanted to. And so on. (snip)

More importantly, we have the question of arguing with authority, with daring to question authority, whether that authority was a doctor, a cop, or a president. The Bushies are finding out to their horror that a great many people now see dissent as the American Way. That wasn't the case in the 50s, not on your life. It's a direct result of the huge numbers of people who turned out to protest in the 60s. At first the media tried to slight the rallies and the marches, but by the end TV news showed streets filled with people from all walks of life, marching to end the war or to give people of color access to all of American life, not just the servant classes.(snip)

More at the link above.

[leftofthedial]

1. PARTY!!!!!!

.... ooooooogh. MAJOR hangover.

[annabanana]

2. Those must be the "excesses of the 60's" that post-boomers

are always on about.

[gateley]

3. I'd forgotten about the Help Wanted columns for each gender. K&R. Thanks! nt

[1monster]

4. Thank you. I think we all tend to forget the bad times and remember the good...

[NOLALady]

18. Two genders and two colors.

[Hekate]

22. One time I took something out of storage and looked at the old newspaper it was wrapped in...

It was really disconcerting to read those Help Wanted ads. It was just assumed that women and people of color would know their places and be grateful for pennies.

In Ye Good Olde Days of the 1950s, women also routinely got fired as soon as their pregnancy began to show, if not sooner.

Hekate

[endarkenment]

5. What was accomplished in the 60s mostly was not accomplished by boomers.

Taking 1945 as the starting point, a boomer was at best 15 in 1960 and 25 in 1970. Boomers accomplished stuff in the 70's 80's and 90's. So on a technicality the essay is partly wrong as most of what was accomplished between 1960 and 1970 was done by the WWII and Korean era generations.

On the other hand I view the 70s as sort of a golden age where individuals actually had freedom and where the cost of living did not grind us all down to simply a 9-5 existence. Had what we boomers started in the 70's been allowed to flower, rather than being trampled underfoot by the counter revolution of reaganism and free market fundamentalism, who knows what might have been?

Unfortunately, that counter revolution was also in large part a product of the efforts of boomers. Ok, we do get the blame for the shithole we have made of the world.

[Cleita]

8. You are right. It was those of us who were born between 1935

and 1945 who did the yeoman's work on the movements. The baby boomers benefited mostly from the reforms we started.

[1monster]

9. The Boomer generation officially started in 1946, but many who were born

during the war could also be considered part of the boomer generation ...

And no one is denying the part played by those who came of age during or after the Korean War.

But have you forgotten who was doing most of the protesting in the mid-sixties onward?

They were kids from fifteen to their early twenties. I remember many high school walk outs or protests for civil rights by teenaged Boomers. Heck, even in my little farm town students protested.

The Baby Boom generation has always been deeply divided. It was true in the sixties and is still true today.

But blaming the Boomers for all the ills of the world is stupid. This struggle has been going on since long before we, our parents, and even our grandparents were born.

We helped change things, but there is still a whole lot more to accomplish.

edit: typed seventies when I meant sixties

[Thothmes]

13. Except

it was mostly boomer blood that soaked the jungles and river deltas of Viet Nam.

[texastoast]

6. The vegetarian movement came out of the Sixties

Consciousness about yoga, Buddhism, alternative energy, not spanking your children, the birth of the idea that sexual harassment is bad . . .

Hell yeah, we were some evil s.o.b.s.

The problem is, few study history. Some of the boomers sold out and drive Hummers, and a lot of us do not. Such a general assertion that "the Boomers ruined the world" is nothing more than ignorant bigotry.

[Cleita]

7. We did a lot to liberate women.

Many women who enjoy good jobs today would have been locked out of them by the good old boy's club if it hadn't been for the women of the sixties who metaphorically burned their bras for them. We still have a long way to go but there were so many ways that a woman's lot in life was improved by many changes in the sixties. I was in my twenties in the sixties and I entered the decade where women were banned from some universities like Cal-Tech and were given a really hard time to enter other fields like medicine and law. I had a friend who went to law school and passed the BAR and who had to work as a paralegal because no law firm would let her practice as a lawyer. The feminist revolution of the sixties had her entering a partnership by 1970.

By the end of the sixties, we were allowed to wear pantsuits on the job and we were able to aspire to management positions that were only formerly open to men. Although, I had a management position in 1965, it was in the back office where the public didn't go and I had to sign my correspondence with my initials instead of my first and second name so people would think I was a man and my boss told me to do it that way or I wouldn't get any respect.

[MedleyMisty]

10. It does get a bit tiring to hear over and over again how great the boomers are

and how much we suck. Especially when you look at the people in power and note their ages.

Everyone is an individual, no matter where or when you were born or how you did in the birth lottery or whatever. Don't judge me based on when I was born and I won't judge you.

My high school, in the mid to late nineties, was quite obsessed with the seventies. :) In IDH we got to pick what we studied and we chose to spend the entire semester on Vietnam. And the songs I most associate with high school are mostly classic 70s rock.

And then at TIP one summer America in the Sixties was the first class to fill up and everyone was jealous that I managed to get in. :) That was a great class.

I know it must be hard to keep it from letting it get to you - like you'll usually find me responding to the posts from boomers complaining about younger people en masse and usually going on about iPods and cell phones just like their parents must have gone on about Elvis and record players or whatever. I know that it's a human nature thing that's been going on for centuries, but prejudice is never right. So I do speak up, and you should too if you want. Generational prejudice is ignorant and stupid no matter which generation it's directed at.

[TahitiNut]

12. Get used to it. It happens to EVERY "generation."

Teens of the 50s had to suffer through the hero worship for the teens who grew up in the Depression with nothing to eat, nothing to wear, no TV, and who walked 10 miles to school and back - where they shared textbooks with three other students after they stoked the schoolroom's stove with wood they chopped all by themselves after they used an outhouse to relieve themselves and wipe using a Sears catalog after which they went off to war and saved the world for coonskin caps.

In every "generation" there are those who spend their time sneering at sucj stories and those who don't bother sneering and just get off their butts to make theor own mark on the world.

No matter how young or old you are, you will "discover" the unfair attack on your "generation" ... and you can pretend you're special or actually BE SPECIAL.

[1monster]

17. Hey! I was a teen of the sixties and I heard the same stories! Except that it was ten miles in the

six foot snow drifts up hill both ways.

But you know, I walked two plus miles to my father's photography studio every day after school so that I could go to work from there. I worked full time and went to school full time. And it was up and down hill all the way, winter snow, spring rain, and autumn chill... I don't think I've ever told my kid that.

The thing is, the stories the kids of today will tell their kids is how they were charged with felonies for being kids and doing the normal stupid things that kids do.

You are right, like the song says, "Every generation blames the one before." I'm just trying to do my part to show that the accomplishments of the Boomer generation were not just "instant gratification" (I have to smile when I hear that... who among the Boomers and generations before every had such "instant" society as we have now?)

It was the thread I mentioned in the OP that influenced me to post Kerr essay. But the truth is that the sixties and early seventies did change our country for the better. We should remember that and not let revisionist history about what a selfish bunch of do nothings we were take hold until it is believe the truth.

P.S. What stories do you tell YOUR kids? :evilgrin:

[NOLALady]

19. We tell our kids

the importance of standing up for your rights.
We tell them that it was considered a badge of honor to be arrested for the crimes of carrying a sign in front of City Hall demanding a right to vote (me) or sitting at a segregated lunch counter (hubby).

We tell them of the struggles and that the struggle is far from over.

[varelse]

16. Generational prejudice is ignorant and stupid no matter which generation it's directed at

True, that. Do you think there's every any hope of the human race letting go of it? It'd be a nice trait to grow out of, for all of us, for all eternity.

[otherlander]

11. I have a theory about this, actually.

I started a Lounge thread about it. If people couldn't look back on the 1960's and make dumb jokes about pothead hippies, 20% of Americans between the ages of 40 and 70 would experience death within 6 months. The most common causes of death would be hypertension, suicide, and liver failure.

(See: Otherlander's Theory of Hypo-pothead-related-humor Induced Death.)

[Echo In Light]

23. It's easy to see which belief systems benefit from focusing away from the era's crucial aspects

It's the only time in recent history when U.S. citizens, en masse, took to the streets in defiance of the corporate/state nexus. Easy to see why many are quick to trivialize, disavow or flat out despise what that represents.

[otherlander]

26. Yes

I agree that Corporate America definitely benefits from trivializing anti-corporatism. But do the rest of Americans really want to be honest about the vastness of a dream they don't have anymore? I think it's a lot easier for most people to just look back and trivialize it than to acknowledge that they once had so much more hope.

[Thothmes]

14. Willingly abetted

the Greatest Generation in the slaughter of 50,000 Americans and several million Vietnamese

[varelse]

15. "Help Wanted" ads came in two columns, male and female

Damn, I never knew that. Learn something new every day.

[Raksha]

24. You didn't know they came in male and female columns?

Damn, you are really making me feel OLD!!! Come to think of it, I guess I am old...how the hell did THAT happen?

[Rosemary2205]

20. Dubya is a boomer.

And a good bit of what's wrong in this world lays at his feet and the people who voted for him.

[Hawkowl]

21. It's not the 60's boomers it's the 80's and 90's boomers

Yes, you did well in the 60's, but what the hell happened?!?! Materialism run amok. "Generation of Swine"? Once the Boomers went from rebellion to actually in charge, what the hell happened?

[1monster]

27. Our leaders were murdered and/or trivalized to the point we had no leaders

any more.

Those who then rose to the surface were either inefectual or played the power game for their own gains.

Plus, the seventies were a time of believing that the fight had been won and we were traveling down the road in the right direction.

People without a true leader will be seduced into following someone who makes them feel good regardless of whether or not they are being led in the direction they wanted to follow. (This was especially true during the 1980 election... The country was being humiliated by the Iran hostage crises, and Carter was unable to solve it until the last moment. Serious speculation, perhaps with some evidence, puts GHW Bush in the middle of sabotaging Carter's efforts. Carter's inability to solve the crises looked like there was a power vaccum in the White House and Reagan, actor that he was, caused many to believe that he could and would make every thing right agian.)

We've seen that here not so long ago. I remember when there was a lot of praise and support for John McCain. I've known him for a political hypocrite for many years, but others here were seeing someone they could vote for...

Most people cannot be effective leaders. It takes someone very special to be able to gain the trust and support of others. Of those so gifted, many are corrupt or corruptable. Those who are not corrupt or corruptable are done away with in one way or another.

One of the enigmas of Bill Clinton is that the opposition, despite their unpresedented efforts to destroy him, were unable to do much more than put a ding or two in his finish. Not even a good sized dent, just a ding or two.

[mmonk]

25. Just look at our candidates. I would say a lot.