Why we millennials can't afford to be colorblind

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http://time.com/3944697/millennials-rac ... rate-flag/

You know its funny, they actually start talking about specific injustices and I will probably agree with them on a lot of things but then they screw it up with racial division. "Colorblind millennials" are not the problem, adopting such a black and white with us or against us mentality is not going to help your cause but more likely alienate and drive away would be supporters. Stop with casting blame and calling white people oppressors and start trying get everybody to see themselves as one people because if we see ourselves as one people then injustice against any of us would be seen as injustice all. The only way racism can disappear is if our entire concept of race disappears. We're not animals and we shouldn't be divided like them, we are all humans right?

But discrimination is about dehumanizing the "others", isn't it?

Gen-X says you should worry more about finding a career and becoming a real grown-up.

They should just take the kids to a ghetto and it will become crystal clear that they "can't afford to be colorblind".

-One of these cities where the radio programs have callers calling in everyday talking about how awful white people are.
-Where locals will run up to a white person and tell them, "You need to get out of here! Or you will be killed".
-Where black coworkers tell you, "You can't live there". (Meaning it's not safe for whites).
-Where people frantically hit the "lock" button in their cars when they see a minority person approaching, because of the sky high crime rate.

I have witnessed all the above.

The Millenials just got kafkatrapped. They were born into a U.S. society where racial discrimination is illegal (the first generation to be born into this, I think) yet there is still racial inequity. They can't work to fix the problem by overturning discriminatory laws as their parents and grandparents generations did. Those laws got overturned. And yet there is still racial inequity. The only actual action they can think of (unless they are Social Justice Warriors, as some must be) is to try just as hard as they can to not be racist(if white) or to get along swimmingly with people of various races and just not talk about it (if not white), which apparently is also the wrong thing.

Maybe this is why people glommed so hard onto getting rid of the Confederate flag after the Charleston shooting. It's actionable. It's immediately do-able. But the problems cited by the author ......

....aren't really actionable by them. The problems cited above are racial problems but they are systemic, not individual and can't be fixed by an individual's actions. Bussing attempted to fix the problem of segregated schools but failed horribly. You can't have unsegregated schools unless people live geographically near each other and don't attend private schools. Some people have decided to see this as a problem of crap schools rather than a problem of segregation which I think has been the more succesful approach. Improve the school rather than fretting that it contains few white kids.

Anyway, none of those things can be fixed by people trying to improve themselves by not being colorblind. And trying to be colorblind in their own personal lives doesn't mean they can't become part of the solution for various parts of those problems. I think when young people call themselves colorblind they don't mean they are oblivious to racial problems (see how many attended anti- police brutality marches), they just mean they are trying just as hard as they can to not be part of the problem.

Stop whining.

Hold down a job for a change.

Try to be better people than your parents.

I guess I'm the opposite of most people. I find the view that we are all the same race to be offensive. Homogeneity isn't necessarily hateful (the Asians also practice it), but it just offends a lot of people. Why are we so afraid now? And this comes from a millennial.

Stay in school and stay out of trouble and stay away from drugs.

Graduate, then get a job, then get married, and then have kids.

Raise those kids to be better people than you ever were.

Repeat with each generation.

First off anyone who was literally born on July 5th 1976 to present can fit many of the ranges used to define "millennials".
There is no set definition other than you had to be born after the U.S. Bicentennial, July 4th 1976.
There are 40+ year olds who fit the range which some professionals use to define millennials, as in most if not all of Gen X is also part of the millennials.

It is Baby Boomers who say you have to go to college, find/start a career, buy a house, get married, have kids and own a new car by age 30!
Oh you are supposed to do it all on your own without help from your family and friends aka Bootstraps.

If you're over 27 and haven't accomplished it, then you aren't taking life seriously!
If you are over 30 and haven't accomplished it, then there is something wrong with you.

Oh you should be able to easily do this afford all of this with great ease like they did.
There is something wrong with you if you have student loans in any real degree.

I've been told the boomer speech more times than I can remember, thanks to all the boomers I know.

Gen X said we had to find ourselves and pursue our dreams, while not seeing skin colors and race.

I was born in 1975. I bought my house when i was 29 years old with no help from my parents or anyone else (Alt-A, baby!). Oh, i never went to college. Far as I know i have no children. I've never been married.

Nobody born after 1976 is over 40 years old at this time. I assume you mystyped.

My best advice would be "Have a marketable skill".

No new cars yet, I can't stomach the $6000+ depreciation that happens the moment i accept the keys. I'm a guy who wants a clean car off a 2-year lease.

I'm not sure who told you to follow your dreams. My parents are boomers and told me i should try to do anything i think i can do and want to do. But dad isn't much of an advocate for everyone going to college - in fact as an english professor he hated that.

Yes a typo!
My dad's a boomer too, as his older brother and sister.
My step mom is also an early boomer as is her older siblings, one of her younger brothers is a boomer (the other is an Xer).

I was warned that I'd be jobless, if I didn't get a college degree in a realistic field because all the manual labor was moving overseas and those that remained were going to be lowered to minimum wage by my grandparents.
Well they were right for the most part.

I was told I needed to be "normal" or no one would want to be friends with me and hire me for a job.
Well I have only 1 friend and no post graduation job yet (it's been almost year since graduation) though plenty of interviews.
I was also told:

*I needed to play sports
*Do good in school
*Help my siblings financially
*Help my parents out financially (done this to some degree), even if it means borrowing money for them
*Take care of my parents in old age
*Quit being selfish member like the rest of my generation and willingly accept the doubling of the Social Security Tax to ensure our parents live well in retirements
*Quit being odd
*Make sure to act and look as white as possibly (part Native American here, rest is all English and German mostly).
*Learn to do as I am told, or I'd wind up on the government dole in adult life
*Pick a practical trade
*Get the necessary surgeries and treatments to rid myself of my disabilities.
*Buy a house cause that what Americans do
*Buy a new car cause we aren't communists
*Never use mass transit, especially trains and subways cause that's what Russians due!
*Other stuff I disagree with

My dad is literally the only one of his siblings that didn't get a college degree and he is trailing his older brother in income and has had numerous promotions and jobs reject him for lacking his engineering degree, though he has been doing all of that since his early 20s. This is the reason why he hasn't been poached (GM and Ford both stopped trying to poach him once they found out he didn't have a degree).
So now he works as an engineer for less than $65,000 a year, though up from the $40,000 he made on his first post recession engineering job.
He has been an engineer literally for almost 30 years now.

He older brother with is degree in engineering, has his own engineering firm and makes loads of money to the point of paying over $60,000+ in alimony to his newly minted ex wife (on top of other stuff he has to pay for her including her health insurance).

He is doing worse than he was in 2009 (making over $120,000 a year).
His current employer said they'd greatly up his pay if he ever completed a formal engineering degree.

He would be the worst performing child if he didn't have a deceased older sister.

Anyways the funny part is most boomers had their parents and government fund their education (not loans), as did all my uncles who are engineers (according to government stats)

Even my dad is funding my younger sister to make up the difference between her scholarship and job, while also cosigning a house for this fall in Ann Arbor (she starts her second year at U of M in Fall).
He refused to help me in any meaningful way to this day (as did my mother).

If you were born in the 80s to boomer parents, you have student loans (the majority).
You aren't considered to be their real children, cause you were born by accident while they were in college.

If you were born after 1990 to boomer parents, then you are considered to be their real children and family (government stats don't lie).
This means your boomer parents are spending money on you instead of pushing you off on to your grandparents (it was quite common for grandparents to be parenting and funding their grandchildren who were born in the 80s like myself).

This why the millennials grouping is a lazy lumping like latino/hispanic label.


Today you need a degree for most jobs at the very least including most internships (if not a masters degree).
Employers are constantly complaining about the lack of educated employees with degrees and skills.

Hell you're lucky if you can find a place to rent for less than $700 a month in most states and yearly university tuition that is less than $10,000 a year and job that doesn't require a degree and specific skill set (and 5+ years of experience for that matter) that pays more than $40,000 a year with actual benefits (it's been decline since the 90s).

This is why it is quite hard to near impossible to get into a steady life without going into huge debt.
You are also probably stuck helping family out financially, since your parents are probably struggling to make ends meat.

I know race relations are very different in the UK and US, but that approach seems to be working very well here. Schools are given extra money for every pupil who has ever lived at a pre-defined poverty level (the point at which the government will pay for your school meals).

A popular way of spending this money is to give all students a free piece of IT, either a laptop or a tablet, which they can use in class and at home. I think this might have further social goods - if you're on the internet, you can't commit petty crimes...

What that article shows is that a large percentage of white people actually are still racist. It doesn't show that being colorbind is bad.

People are so f*****g stupid. Color doesn't mean s**t. if you are grow up in a sh***y ass environemt though, you are going to develop some sh***y ass behaviors.

When you grow up privileged there is a tendency to say that everyone who grows up less privileged is a lazy stupid as*hole. People need to get the f**k over themselves.

Does the UK school system force people to only go to the school in their area? Here, if you want to send your kid to a good school but you live in the craphole neighborhood, you just plain can't. There have been many parents who have tried to get around this and if they get caught, get thrown in jail or fined heavily for "stealing from the government."
Unfortunately, this keeps the poor in the poor areas and helps keep them poor, plus increases the likelyhood that they'll get in with the wrong crowd.

Well, isn't that what well-off people are paying the government to do? After all, they're paying most of the tax money.