I find it sad, tragic, that this article falls prey to the single worst way I can imagine of "overcoming" the race-gender dichotomy: by saying the author is an avid fan of both of Clinton and Obama, and entirely ignoring the issue of class and capitalism.

Overcoming the race-gender dichotomy by saying "they're both fantastic" is like saying I support gay rights - you can take me seriously because I'm not gay myself. ("I want to overcome the race-gender divide - and you can take me seriously because I'm a big fan of both of them.")

Near the end, the author gives a token statement about the need to call into question the whole idea of empire, but does not see the glaring contradiction with the fact that Hillary Clinton and likely Barack Obama are massively in support of empire and of capitalism.

Building a movement against dwarfing class disparity and capitalism is a tremendous task that needs to be undertaken with the support and in coalition with movements for women's justice and civil rights, labor movements and the many other movements for human and social justice. It cannot be relegated to a token comment at the end of an article because it sounds nice there.

We need to transform society, and not just change the power dynamics of injustice.

Dan Nissenbaum

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My step daughter is 25 ('83) and she makes me a very Proud Parent. She has found her own voice, made her own way and knows she can meet any challenge.
My Genereation ('63)was caught between the Boomers and the so called 'Me' Generation. I've come to Regard the reference to Me as meaning- who will have to carry the weight of the Boomers as they Age- Me. Who will have to clean Up the Mess they've left behind- Me. Who will have to be a worker until death to help the next generation not have to carry the load Alone- Me.But I am glad to help. I find Your Generation a generation which enjoys the perks, but recognizes their community responsiblity. You may be the first generation to truely embrace all that our Founding Fathers Dreamed of ...Equality & justice for All.
The Boomers got so caught up in their own 'entitlements',Their own Self righteousness and their own Vendettas- they have forgotten about all those behend them and frankly those who they were to care for ahead of them. 'Spoiled Brats' my mother calls them- to young to be part of the 'Greatest Generation' ('33).
I always admired the 'Hippie ' Movement -wishing I could have been older- now I realize they were a Sham.
I now am thrilled to be able to be a help to this new generation of young adults who live up to the ideals the Boomers just Talked about.
So I will grant you this...In any way and in every way I will be there to be sure the Load is not to heavy for your Generation.I will not just cheer you on - I will be next to you.But beware the older gnerations have been playing con games and subliminal Deceptions for Decades- We must be viligent in detecting thier manipulations.
Note about the Womens Movement( which I cut my teenage teeth on in the late'70's)- It began as a Liberation movement , not a 'Pay Backs A Bitch'- our goal was to Prove we could earn our place at the table, not that we needed the bar lowered or special consideration and Treatment. it undermines our efforts. We also were a movement who knew we must fight for equality for All, not just ourselves. Women like Hillary & Ferraro have either forgotten our basic tenents or never had them to begin with.WE must play by the Rules,even when unfair- it only proves we can meet any challenge regardless of the obstacles- validates Us even more making it impossible to deny Us our place.Granted we want to change the way the game is played- but we have to get in it first, and on our own merits.That which does not kill us makes Us Strong.
Also I already have an appt today with the Flint Obama Office today to start putting not only my money -but my efforts where my mouth is....
Oh Yes WE Can!!!!
GoodBye Boomers, Your Time has Expired!

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How adorable.
Of course, actually taking a position on some issue is out of the question, as that might disturb the writer's atomic individualism.

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Courtney Martin isn't (necessarily) responsible for the headline on her article -- "Generation Y Rejects Race-Gender Dichotomy," to which my first reaction was "Oh yeah?" and my second "So what?" -- but her breathless intro reminds me of those tedious discoveries that the mass media make every September: "When today's entering college freshmen were born, George H. W. Bush was president . . . ," blah blah blah.

I could make similiar big sprawling generalizations about my generation (middle-of-the-boom boomers) too. We antiwar organizers were all-fired-up independent too. We didn't get suckered by the Socialist Workers Party, and when (some of) our elders talked about "party discipline" in the old Communist Party, we sniggered, "So you just followed orders, eh?" The major antiwar bills in Congress were often sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican -- McGovern-Hatfield, Cooper-Church -- so I don't think that shoot-yourself-in-the-foot partisanship was the order of the day then either, at least not for those working for social and political change.

I grew up listening to adults say stuff like "I vote for the man [sic], not the party." Maybe those men came from the same party 95% of the time, but still, many, many people thought they should be voting for the person, not the party. Courtney Martin refers to her generation's "tendency towards thinking and acting solo" -- it's not new; it's good ol' "rugged individualism" dressed up in new rhetoric, and it's a big honking problem in this country.

Get this: John McCain could be a paragon of political and personal virtues, I could agree with 95% of what he says -- but if he were the candidate of the Republican Party as currently constituted, no way in hell would I vote for him. If Barack Obama -- not a paragon, but definitely one of the best major-party presidential candidates I've seen in my lifetime -- were the candidate of the Republican Party as currently constituted, I wouldn't vote for him either.

Voting for "the person, not the party" is, at best, short-sighted. The person's allegiances -- who does she listen to, who makes big donations to his campaign, etc. -- are almost certainly going to have a much greater impact on performance in office than the person's character or what s/he says s/he is for or against. "Thinking and acting solo" is likewise. The labor movement wasn't organized by lone wolves and mavericks and people too fastidious to occasionally subordinate their own solo wills for the collective good. Ditto the civil rights movement. Ditto any movement that ever achieved anything in this country.

Courtney Martin's million-dollar question:
How, with a generation bent on individuality and multiplicity, do we confront racism, sexism and all the other insipid -isms that have been brought to light by this unprecedented campaign?

If it is, then the 1.5 million-dollar question is "Didn't you notice 'racism, sexism and all the other insipid -isms' before this campaign?" If not, why not? Maybe they weren't covered in your "Free to Be . . . You and Me" Celebrate Diversity class? Sheesh. FDR died six years before I was born, but somehow I managed to meet and learn from many, many people who lived through and organized during the Depression and the New Deal. I didn't meet them by "thinking and acting solo" -- I met them because of the movements I threw myself into. I learned a helluva lot about myself and my own circumstances through those movements. I learned a helluva lot about diversity, though "diversity" wasn't a buzzword then and we didn't call it that. Maybe Ms. Martin and her friends would benefit from similar exposure. Or maybe they just want to pontificate to each other in panel discussions while the rest of us shake our heads and mutter old-fart stuff about learning from history and reinventing the wheel.

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There is a lot I disagree with in this article. As other comments have said, Obama is not substantially different than Clinton on the issues and I've not seen one indicator from Obama that our current quest for empire is in jeopardy from him.

My biggest point of contention lies here:

And we must demand that our candidates rise to the occasion, as I believe Obama did so beautifully with his speech on race following the Reverend Wright controversy. He brought that conversation to a new level, and we are all better off for it. We need to continue to push for that kind of brazen truth-telling -- about gender, certainly, about class, for sure. That's what politics is supposed to be about -- not partisanship or strategic spinning, but honesty and uplift..

Yes you are right that we needed to have "that" conversation, but it wasn't good enough and eventually Obama was forced to throw the Rev. Wright and ALL that he was about under the bus in a big way in order to stay viable as a candidate.

Now McCain's batshit insane "spiritual advisor" (Hagee) can continue on with his litany of retarded preaching and all McCain had to do was renounce the endorsement. Case closed. He was not forced to go back and apologize and totally disconnect himself from the hate mongering, lying Hagee.

Hmmm... seems like a pretty big difference in this situation to me.

And yes, maybe to overcome some of your naivety could check out your candidate's positions on the issues.

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This is one of the most incoherent, self contradictory, over generalizing, judgemental articles I have read on Alternet in quite a while; and thats saying A LOT. The author writes: "We shy away from taking on any sort of movement identity, preferring to vote for the individual candidate and his or her policies, and preferring to be seen as individual people -- not a texting, IM-ing mass of technologically superior and socially inferior sons and daughters." Well, you're speaking for a lot of people, while claiming they are all individualists, and also downplaying how many of Generation Y(?) actually are more into texting, i-pods, etc. than into serious politics, of which you yourself seem to know very little.
Hillary Clinton is to femminism what Clarence Thomas is to Black Power. Neither Obamma nor Clinton, or ANYONE ELSE that the media allows to get this far, are going to stop the continuation of the American Empire. They don't even want to! Listen very closely, and critically, to what Obbama and Clinton have repeatedly said about the use American military power (and budget) and it becomes clear that the "War on Terror" will not be ending anytime soon. I highly reccomend that all alternet users go to politicalcompass.org and complete the 5 minute survey that then maps your idealogical position on a chart. Then compare where you stand in relation to Obbama/Clinton. Even more interesting though, is how closely Obbama/Clinton are to Bush/McCain.
As to your statement "as if there is a 'right' way to vote if I am a feminist" there usually is actually. Pro choice or not. I can't think of a single (partisan) election - i.e. not a primary - that it wasn't completely obvious who to vote for if you are at all left wing.
I get really tired of people saying "I don't like the whole liberal/conservative dichotomy, things are much more complex than that, I look at the individual candidate and make my decision based on their stand on the various issues blah blah blah." Spoken like a true Reagan Democrat. Pick a side. Actually the two sides that we get to choose from at election time are, as Nader pointed out, not different sides at all, just slightly different versions of the same thing.
Lastly, if you actually think that all of those young voters that registered to vote, actually will vote in November, (remember "Rock the Vote" and "Vote or Die") than you're a complete fool. McCain, sadly, stands a very real chance of becoming the 44th President. (I hope and pray that I'm wrong.)

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Do I have to wait until I am 21 to be sexist? Should I be empirasist before 50? Should another age determine democratist? Do I have to be a Democrat to be a democratist? How about racist to vote for a black? Or sexist to vote for HRC? Am I a white supremacist, or male chauvinist, if I vote for John McCain?

We have dwelt too long on these handles and boxes to deal with real issues. I am a truthist. As a truthist, I can vote the real issues without fear of losing one or more of my handles or getting out of the box where I belong, or receiving a handle or being put into a box against my will. However, someone will assume that I am sexist, racist, socialist, or communist, or religionist, if I allow myself to be influenced ever so slightly by any of the real or artificial divisions we recognize in the vernacular.

Note the fear of the label anti-Semitism. All logic, good sense, reason, and democratic ideals melt to a mass of goo when men and women of otherwise good minds confront issues of human rights violations by Jews, failures of democracy in Israel, elections in America, sucking up to the common wisdom, or press coverage historic events. Note the fear of the racist label if one chooses a mate of a different race or ethnic origin. Note the fear of censure if one finds a single virtue in a tyrant or a fault in an icon of trust. Note the fear of being non-compliant it one does not wear a flag pin in public, or perform the salute to the flag or the national anthem exactly as prescribed. Note the impact of the statement, "I am a Catholic, but I am not very religious." or "I am very religious, but I am not Christian." or "I am Muslim, but I do not mistreat any people of the book." How about, "I am atheist, but extremely moral and kind to animals." Finally, "I am right because I have a right to believe whatever I want to."

"Judge not, lest you be judged, but judge, lest you be censured for violations of CW."

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tighten an old Evangelical republican Red Neck's colon


lol

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Though its mere mention is deeply offensive to most U.S. leftists, the truth of class-struggle is the most powerfully revealing tool of socioeconomic analysis ever conceived by humans.

Without recognition of class-struggle, the escalating atrocities of the present appear to be nothing more than random phenomenon coincidentally concentrated in place and time. But when class-struggle is acknowledged, those atrocities become part of a pattern of savagery traceable to the Abrahamic core-doctrines of divinely ordained male despotism, and perhaps to the very emergence of patriarchy some 5000 years ago.

But whatever the source of the savagery and however it is named -- whether it is exalted as “godliness” and imposed by “god’s chosen people,” labeled führerprinzip and enforced by übermenschen, or enshrined in law as “owner’s prerogatives” and “executive privilege” -- its principles are ultimately identical, and murderous oppression is always its result.

While the natural response to oppression is resistance, resistance without recognition of class-struggle invariably fails. Why? Because whether the oppressors find inspiration in the bible or Mein Kampf or the doctrines of corporate management or all of these, they have their motives and rationale clearly fixed in their predatory minds, and their depredations are thus not only purposefully vicious but often committed with sadistic relish. Nevertheless these hideous truths become obvious only through the clarifying lens of class-struggle

Alas, Courtney E. Martin’s generation -- and in fact every U.S. generation from the baby-boomers onward -- have been methodically denied not just the concept of class-struggle but every one of the many other vital instruments of consciousness-raising now gathering dust and cobwebs in a socialist toolbox too long scorned and belittled as irrelevant. More than anything else, it was by that denial -- that extended act of intellectual robbery -- the ruling class was able to subvert the New Deal and force all of us, the entire U.S. working class, ever closer to the ultimate degradation of genuine serfdom.

Thus Ms. Martin can proclaim what she supposes is a manifesto of radical values -- “we care deeply about issues of race, gender, class, and religion… we need to continue to push for that kind of brazen truth-telling -- about gender, certainly, about class, for sure” -- without the slightest possibility any of her assertions will ever threaten the ruling class with economic justice or loss of power. Though it is surely not Ms. Martin’s fault she has been intellectually robbed, she might as well be telling us all we need do to take back the country is “visualize change.”

If I may paraphrase Dan Nissenbaum’s comment above, “we need to transform society, and not just change the language by which we address injustice.” A good start -- for Ms. Martin as well as a great many others -- would be to read the works of Karl Marx and reflect on how the tyrannosaur of capitalism is far deadlier today than it was 150 years ago. Which is why Marxism -- instead of being obsolete -- is now more relevant than ever.

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WTF does Ms. Martin or others in her generation stand for? It seems like nothing at all. What an airhead!

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I am about three months older than the writer of this article, and my upbringing can't have possibly been more different than hers. I'm glad she had liberal hippy parents, but I sure as heck did not. But the major problem I saw with this article is that she uses "multiplicity" and "individuality" as an excuse for making nothing happen.

Here's what I mean: stand up for Hillary but vote for Obama. If you don't put your vote where your mouth is, then what good was your mouth or your vote? I think the reason that politically interested 20-somethings can't seem to get anything real done in the sociopolitical landscape is that very problem. We're all too divergent and only halfway come together sometimes, and ultimately we have no big group voice advocating for anything. So, in our little disparate corners of the globe we contradict ourselves guilt-free, according to this author. And it's mostly true, but not at all worth celebrating. This was the absurd mentality that caused my so-called feminist ex-boyfriend to think wearing t-shirts that made jokes about domestic violence was "ironic."

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Now that was a fascinating article indeed. Nicely written and well rounded for us generation X'ers. LOL

Johny Walton
Is your ISP spying on you?

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I didn't get you. Are you aware that Barak's mom was a white girl with a PHD from a good family & they all lived happily in Hawaii?
Puleeez stop the petty bickering. It aint silver and it aint gold
to dis, dis, dis.

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"How could we affiliate with one party/movement/organization when we contain such a multitude of loyalties in our own little legacies?"

When the "multitude of loyalties" is not taken as naturally given, but as ideological obfuscation, it's not hard to drop them to the side while rallying behind the one thing that matters most for every human being that has ever lived: how we get our living. This is an equal opportunity rallying point like none other: not only white, heterosexual men, but black, trans-gendered women all have to worry about it. All are conditioned by it. The working-poor in Mexico and China and the United States already have more in common than multiculturalists pre-suppose by foregrounding (i.e. commodifying) their culture before their material conditions of existence.

There is no real obstacle to organizing. Our info-matic culture is ripe---and at the rate we're going about it, as corporations and other Capitalist interests take over the internet like they have the air-waves, in danger of rotting---for the revolutionary organization. The biggest danger is purely ideological, and it comes variously in the form of nation, sex, race, religion, age, sexual orientation. These are not the categories that fundamentally determine how you get your living; they mitigate it for sure. They are identities generated by our economic activity, but do not come before it. Political organizing on the basis of economic interest, in the interest of how we get our living, is not the only but the most basic and necessary form of political organization.

The only other sort of political concern that might dig deeper than economics is ecology, though I think they are really inseparable, and can only move forward when treated as such.

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The girl wasn't writing a doctoral thesis for God's sake, she was writing a five hundred word article for a website. Yes, she over-generalized, but she also made some salient points about a dominant theme in political mentality among people born in the late seventies and early eighties. Why is it that when a writer comes along and honestly tries to express their perspective (and it's just that, one person's perspective) on the US political landscape, Alternet readers simply dimiss them out of hand with patronizing remarks?

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With Gen Y calling women "bitches" and apeing the gansta rap retards they've been brainwashed on, and withthe endless youtube vids of Gen Y males face-fucking their "bitches" and generally humiliating them, I'm not so sure any progress has been made.

If anything, it's gone backwards.

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One single hitherto unheralded and unrecognized emancipative moment in American history needs to be exposed at this critical time in an effort to heal non antagonistic divisions and unite the mass of American voters for victory against fascism, war, poverty and slavery during the November 2008 presidential elections and beyond.

This historic moment occurred on February 8, 1864 in the United States Senate when the great Abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner submitted his joint resolution S.B.24 for the then new Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish all slavery forever.

S.B.24:

"Everywhere within the limits of the United States, and of each State or Territory thereof, all persons are equal before the law,
so that no person can hold another as a slave."

Senator Howard, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, attempted to discredit Sumner's proposition by appealing to the masculine insecurities and fears of the Senators with this statement:

"I suppose before the law a woman would be equal to a man, a woman would be as free as a man. A wife would be equal to her husband and as free as her husband before the law."

Sumner's joint resolution failed to get the endorsement of the Senate's Judiciary Committee. Instead, the proposition submitted by the self proclaimed slaveholder, Senator Henderson, of Missouri, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864.

Thirteenth Amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Courageously, Sumner opposed the stated EXCEPTION for slavery AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME; and he further exposed its origins as coming from the 1787 Jeffersonian Ordinance, and sequentially from the Missouri State Constitution of February 15, 1819.

What would we, as a people, be today if Sumner's proposition had passed 144 years ago? Would we be free from all vestiges of black chattel slavery, would we have equality between men and women, would workers be free from wage slavery, would prisoners be free from "slavery…as a punishment for crime"; and would the world be free from war, poverty and hunger?

If we are products of our environment, and if our environment had changed in the positive with Sumner's proposition - what collective and individual values, privileges, material, social, political and economic advantages would we have otherwise gained. Would our environment now be free from slavery, racism, sexism, ageism, poverty, war, and corporate fascism?

However positive our lives could have changed, and however the cumulative differences might have been, the fact is that Sumner's proposition was defeated.

Senator Sumner, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Slavery and the Treatment of Freedmen, stated:

"Beyond my general desire to see an act of universal emancipation that shall at once and forever settle this great question, so that it may no longer be the occasion of strife between us, there are two other ideas which are ever present to my mind as a practical legislator: first, to strike at slavery wherever I can hit it; and secondly, to clean the statute-book of all existing supports of slavery, so that it may find nothing there to which it may cling for life. To do less than this at the present moment, when slavery is still menacing, would be an abandonment of duty.

So long as a single slave continues anywhere beneath the flag of the Republic I am unwilling to rest. Too well I know the vitality of slavery with its infinite capacity of propagation, and how little slavery it takes to make a slave State with all the cruel pretensions of slavery…"

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if this is what it takes for the under 30 yo to enter the political realm, then raise your hands in the air. with all the aloofness of americans to the plight of their fellow humans on this continent and others, this may serve as the opening door from political trickery (yes hillary & obama are the same species with different markings) of world domination in the forms of war mongering, weapons sales, unfair economic policies, political gangsterism, all coupled with the reality of american politricks dominated by sound bites and scanty policy statements. when they wake up to the reality of it all then maybe we can have real politics, and race and gender won't be an issue, but we have to take baby steps in the realm of social science.

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Sometimes I hear older people dismissing the theories and experiences of youth - that's ageism.
But it is also ageism to think that you and the people your age are the ONLY people who have the "answer" or answers.

Goodness, do you think only people your age embrace feminism as an ideology that incorporates work around race, genders, orientations, faiths, abilities, etc. etc. etc.?

Do you think only people your age are able to incorporate an analysis that includes being anti-racist and anti-sexist?

Boomers are not monolithic. Individuals and collectives in the late 60s and early 70s started some revolutionary movements in the United States.

Read some history. Look at the history of resistance movements in the United States, not just feminism and civil rights, but environmental movements, anti-nuclear power movements, health care movements to ban cigarettes, etc. etc. etc.

Learn some humility, for gosh sakes.

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was the poison Gloria Steinem poured into the water of political discourse, in claiming Obama wasn't qualified to be president. Don't tell me what you stand for when you won't chastise those within your circle in a public forum. Trying to straddle the balance beam of middle of the road politics, by acknowledging there were some sexist remarks made, while ignoring those in your sisterhood, who were effective in playing the race card doesn't make you politically courageous.

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I am a part of the Gen X group but know plenty of people that are in the author's same age group. I've noticed that magical thinking is hard at work. People in my age group and hers are are quite reluctant to tackle issues of race, class, gender, or economy in any real "meaty" way. It makes them feel highly unconfortable. They would all rather whitewash issues than to deal with them directly. They are more focused on career which is supposed to be more egalitarian and thus easier to handle. Don't get me wrong, they are charitable people and do plenty of community work. They also have diverse friendships and relationships. However, the -isms are everywhere. They pepper their conversations. Instead of focusing on race they focus on class and weight.

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