Afro millennials is a term used to define the generation born post oppression and into a new South Africa filled with opportunities. “post oppression” how is it post oppression you would then try figure out when those deemed to be born at an era filled with possibilities are still trying to figure out what era could be worse, the oppression era or post oppression era.
To an extent yes we are born at a time when the world was and still is going through an evolution that has broadened our goals and opened all races, genders to a “certain level of equality”, though realistically not really equal. Millennials feels like another form of oppression and limitation to what our generation has the possibility to become. Why label us? Why set a standard and level to who and what we represent, why not just let us be and allow us to figure out our being without clouding our judgements and decision of who we are?
One article online even goes as far as describing this generation as narcissistic, entitled, confident, tolerant, materialistic, civic-minded, and a whole lot of other things. Why are we being put in a box that sums up some “researcher’s” idea of who we are?
Narcissistic maybe… Entitled not in this life time, I am surrounded by young people on a daily who spend sleepless nights hustling to get their own. The struggles of our parents may have been “ideally” conquered but on a daily more and more young people are drowning either in debt, fighting for racial equality in the work place where by in a recent accident a black man was forced into a coffin to what I will refer to as a stunt to prove white supremacy is still very much alive and a serious problem not only in South Africa but across the globe. We are still fighting for better education no different from the youth of June 16 1976, if you ask me. If the government can sit around while the police brutally attack students who are fighting for free education in an economy that allows it, then we are far from being a generation born in post oppression, instead we are born in a generation when the oppressor has figured a clever way to oppress us in a manner that seems acceptable to the previously disadvantaged in the name of “a new South Africa filled with Possibilities”.
Confident hell yeah we are, that’s the only thing the oppressor has failed to steal from us, that they were able to steal from our parents, it’s the only thing that picks us up each time the “millennial system” tries to put us down. Tolerant? You must have us mistaken with the generation of yester years, in no ways will we agree to tolerate the intolerable and I speak for every young person born in this so called “Millennials era” when I say #WeAreComingForEverything including our land, amongst complete race, gender, education and financial equality.
“Materialistic”, how is claiming back what belongs to us being materialistic? Was it not materialistic when those in the well-off background, drove better cars and lived in the biggest yards (which they still do) built on land stolen from our ancestors. And wore the best fashion money could buy, money made from exploiting the previously disadvantage as they slaved away in farms that initially belonged to them, farms that are rightfully our inheritance. Materialistic is a tittle we are willing to embrace as a form of catching up with the privileged circles, as we weren’t born with silver spoons waiting to feed us diamond and gold cuisines on silver platters made from blood and sweat of slavery.
Civic-minded is how we are raised, from the day we are born we are taught the basics of humanity “ a giving hand is more blessed than a receiving hand” we have succumbed to this so much so that giving is the only thing we know, receiving has become somewhat unexpected in the society we live in. Taking what we know belongs to us is the only way forward and the only way to any form of liberation for the generation born in previously disadvantaged homes.
Millennial might define the generation born into trust funds. The rest of us are humans busy being, trying to figure out if the world is ready for us… cause trust me #WeAreComingForEverything.
Writer: Lutende Modau