I noticed today, not for the first time, that the primary insult from people under 25 is “You’re old.”

The thing is, for most of my folks at least, that ain’t an insult. At all. The greatest thing about age is you’re aware of how much you DON’T know...

... but the things you DO know, you know because you were there. Context of time and climate mean EVERYTHING.

I see alot of jumping on folks recalling the collective feeling in the streets when the crime bill came to pass. Not saying it was a good idea, not denying it’s harmfulness, but explaining WHY, at the time, it had Black support. Hindsight vs real time are two different reels.

Hindsight + time to observe impact is like watching the DVD with bonus content, BTS interviews, plus an exclusive ending that didn’t run in theater.

If you weren’t there - for ANYTHING, not just this - it costs you nothing to consider perspective of those who were instead of immediately jumping to tell them they’re wrong.

I wear GenX with pride. We went through some shit. In 3D, outside, with real guns, real drugs and real crackheads. No screens, no keyboard thugs, no entire idealogies formed from the distance of written history.

I admire the passion GenZ and the youngest set of Millenials have for what they believe. It’s beautiful. 20s are also a decade of believing shit is all black or white. You don’t see gray forreal until them last few years before 30.

Most of the world operates in the gray.

We had a whole movie genre based on crack, drive bys and jacks. That shit ain’t come from video games.
https://twitter.com/rashanjamal/status/1293809459345620993?s=21 https://twitter.com/rashanjamal/status/1293809459345620993

The reason people tell 20 year olds they don’t know shit yet is... because they don’t know shit yet. Even when they DO, they don’t. And it’s an impossible cycle to repeat. We were all there once, and we were all arrogant in our certainty of everything.

My dad used to say “Youth is wasted on the young,” and it’s like a casual loop in time travel - you find yourself repeating things said to you.. they’ll later to the same... and so on.

And I think what our youngest adults don’t get is that ALOT of the time, no one is trying to insult their capacity to reason, their intelligence, but trying to share the perspective of EXPERIENCE, which is how culture works. You pass on, you pass down, you share, you teach.

My dad ALSO said you don’t live long enough to make all the mistakes yourself. I don’t remember being as openly defensive and out of hand rejecting as young adults are now, but I was probably thinking everything they say in my head