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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Is Obama our first Gen-X president? Andrew C. Thompson, Jan 13, 2009
Andrew C. Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
On Jan. 20, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. At the age of 47, that puts him at the end of what is usually considered the Baby Boomer generation.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Boomers include those born between 1946 and 1964. Since Mr. Obama’s birthdate is Aug. 4, 1961, that makes him a Boomer.
Just barely.
But to many, the next president just doesn’t seem like a Boomer. In contrast with his two Boomer predecessors (Presidents Clinton and Bush), Mr. Obama did not come of age in the 1960s. He was not personally affected by Vietnam, the Civil Rights struggle or the various “revolutions” of the 1960s.
And he consciously tries to avoid (or even transcend) the partisan political rancor that Boomers on the left and the right have embraced.
Mr. Obama’s race itself is often cited as putting him in a post-Boomer category. Born to a black father (from Kenya) and a white mother (from Kansas), Mr. Obama’s racial makeup and racial attitudes cast him in a mold that is quite different from the “identity politics” struggles so often waged by Boomers.
Then of course there is Mr. Obama’s message itself: “change.” It is not always clear what he meant by that campaign slogan, but it seems he is interested in moving beyond the political and cultural divides that have marked Boomer-led American society.
So it’s not too surprising that the media have increasingly identified Mr. Obama as a member of Generation X. Many people are beginning to redefine Gen X itself as beginning in 1961: the year of Mr. Obama’s birth.
The Census Bureau parameters of the Baby Boomer generation are based on demographics. From 1946 to 1964, there was a demonstrable “boom” in the number of live births per 1,000 people in the U.S.
The newer generational concept is based more on cultural experience. Having grown up in the aftermath of 1960s Boomer idealism, Gen X-ers are marked by a certain ironic detachment and cynicism.
The book that put the term into the pop culture lexicon was Douglas Coupland’s novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Mr. Coupland’s protagonists move away from L.A. to the desert of Palm Springs to flee consumerism and search for authentic existence. Increasingly, it is Mr. Obama himself who is representing the best of what Generation X can hope for.
He is cast as something of a redeemer for a generation that has never had a definable struggle to wage. Just after the election, Heather Havrilesky wrote on Salon.com that the Obama victory gave Gen X-ers a reason to finally embrace the idealism of the Boomers.
“We never want to go back to our old way of thinking,” she wrote. “Sure, we’ll still be our irreverent, self-deprecating, exasperating selves, but we also want to believe.”
Note what is going on here. A generation of people so mired in consumerism that they feel like they have been force-fed the cultural equivalent of an all-Fruity Pebbles diet are finding their savior in a man who inspires them to something more than shopping, X-Box, Facebooking and e-mail. Mr. Obama’s presidential rhetoric and bearing are making believers out of lifelong cynics.
That’s exciting stuff. I think Barack Obama will make a fine president. A truly Gen-X president.
But could the 46 million Gen X-ers possibly be setting themselves up for disappointment? Is it fair to turn a politician into a savior?
Whether Gen X Christians can begin to think as creatively about the church as Barack Obama has about the nation is an open question. If they can, perhaps Mr. Obama’s slogan of change will be one the church can embrace as well.
Andrew C. Thompson
