Mr grandparents, William and Edna Parham.
When I was young my mother and I lived with my grandparents for a while, just like many other millennials my age. In fact in 2000- when the last of us were born- 5 million grandparents lived with a grandchild. It was my grandparents, Willie and Edna Parham, who impacted my foundation the most. I recognize traces of their attitudes, beliefs, even behaviors within me.
To this day I find it remarkable, the parallels between my generation, millennials, and my grandparent’s generation, the Silent generation. It’s no wonder I was close to them- the older I get the more I realize the challenges Blacks from the Silent generation faced have resurfaced for Black millennials.
My grandmother was an optimistic, open-minded woman living in an uncivilized city with southern attitudes towards racial equality. And generally, since the days Granny raised children not much about my hometown has changed. Many Blacks in Baltimore continue to live in racial and economic disparity. It is a city comprised of over 220 neighborhoods, the most of any U.S. city. That’s not an encouraging statistic; to this day our neighborhoods are literally divided due to segregation. Former Baltimore City Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said just two years ago our city is STILL dealing with 1950s- and 1960s-era racism. There are neighborhoods which boast $800,000 condominiums on the right side of the street and public housing on the left.
Cases of riots, racism, police brutality and segregation run rampant across the country, but as we learned in the case of Freddie Gray these cases become more potent in a city as small as Baltimore. As A. Dwight Pettit, a Black lawyer, once said, "The nation has gone backward. Baltimore is a shining example of what is wrong in America.”
Still, with all the many issues affecting my community (geographically and culturally), I’ve got to remember how members of the Silent generation like Granny remained resilient, keeping their perspective without becoming cynical. And I’ve got to take it one step further. Unlike Granny I’m a working mother with the chance to influence on a greater scale. To become truly insightful and dynamic for my generation, my gender and my race.
I know that last one is not going to be easy. Psychologists have studied race-based stress and trauma in Black people and it’s an ongoing and very real problem, as devastating as gunfire or sexual assault. One study found that Blacks who experienced the most racism were significantly more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD as well. Black people with PTSD have lower expectations about the goodwill of the world; to them we are not all distinct, precious and worthy. Nowhere feels safe. With all the media coverage of racism, police brutality and undeserved acquittals, like other Black people I feel constantly surrounded by reminders that undeserved race-related danger can occur at anytime, anywhere, to me or anyone in my family.
Baltimore 1968, left and Baltimore 2015, right.
It’s mind-boggling how my grandmother’s perspective of other races remained positive. She never showed any signs to me of gloom, resentment or fear towards White people, our city, or our nation, and that’s commendable. She somehow balanced remaining civically engaged, staying abreast on the state of Black America in Baltimore and across the nation with raising enlightened children who were respectful of other cultures. As a mother, wife and businesswoman, I’ve got to do the same.
Granny and I both also lived through major financial crises during the most influential years of our life, ingraining in our minds the importance of being financially responsible. But I must say, the eeriest connection I have to my grandmother, that all Black millennials today have to those from the Silent generation, is the parallel between our 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump to their 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Granny was just 10 years older than me when Nixon was elected president. As a presidential candidate, Nixon embraced the “Southern Strategy”, a political tactic in which a party (typically Republicans) increases its support in former Confederate states by appeals to racial resentment, intolerance and White solidarity.
Sound familiar? Many journalists and political strategists claimed President Trump’s campaign was a manifestation of this strategy. Both Trump and Nixon have been called racists, and though there will be 43 years between their presidencies, both hold primitive racial views. Nixon believed the abortion of mixed babies was necessary and that Black people were "Negro bastards" who only wanted to "live like a bunch of dogs" on welfare. President Trump has a great relationship with “the Blacks, “and when compared to White people considers Black people lazy. He disparaged the Black Lives Matter movement, which strives for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise, deprived of basic human rights and dignity.
What’s probably more so uncanny is Nixon’s wife, former First Lady Pat Nixon, predicting that one day Donald Trump would win the presidency if he ever ran for office. Nearly 30 years ago, Nixon wrote President Trump a letter after his wife sung Trump’s praises. The First Lady watched him on the platform where evidently all groundbreaking politics were discussed in the ‘80s… The Phil Donahue Show.
Obviously both Nixon and President Trump’s presidential campaigns stemmed from fear, or what I like to call it, the preservation of “minority inferiority”. (The opposite of this, White supremacy, is such a harsh phrase for even me to say so I say this instead.) The need to preserve the power slowly slipping from the White man’s hands and into the hands of a more culturally diverse, freethinking generation. It’s better explained by American documentary filmmaker and author Michael Moore, who called the angry White man “endangered”:
There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done…. now, after having had to endure eight years of a Black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman (Democratic presidential candidate and rival to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton) bossing us around? After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a f***in’ hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop!
I think it’s disappointing to many Americans to think a reality TV star and WWE Hall of Famer is our president, but it’s devastating for Black millennials to realize he’ll follow President Barack Obama. Over 140 years after two policemen attempted to escort a welcomed Black man off White House premises, President Obama turned around and called that his home as America’s first Black president. He caused Black women voters to turn out at the highest rates of any race/gender subgroup in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, and made the Wall Street Journal call us the backbone of the Democratic party.
It’s too early to tell what President Trump’s legacy will be, but hopefully he will not be as detrimental to Blacks in America as Nixon.
When you sum it all up, both generations experienced their own version of hard times in their earlier years, followed by times of social advancement and prosperity. But the Silent generation was not only able to change with society, they were willing to change. Granny didn’t graduate high school, but that didn’t mean she wanted to stop learning. She was resilient, and I believe it’s because of her ability to change that I too want to be a woke Black millennial woman who never stops learning. Never stops growing. Never stops advancing and improving. Yeah the Silent generation is old. But watching our nation experience both unimaginable revolutions and overwhelming setbacks has made them insightful, passionate and present. My grandmother lived a well-rounded life on her terms, and if we Black millennials don’t wanna be like that, then I don’t know what we’d wanna be.