Always a diligent student, Katherine started out on the premed track at Brown. But then a new limb sprouted on her dream tree—one that her mother still doesn’t understand. She read in the local newspaper that South Korean women were being forced into brothels near Brown. Appalled, Katherine joined forces with another Brown student to form the Polaris Project, now one of the largest anti-human-trafficking organizations in the country. “It was really hard for my parents,” says Katherine, now 27. “They gave up a life in Korea; they were working 80 to 90 hours a week, and had so many life stresses so their children could get a great education and have a comfortable life.”
The dreams of parents and children often clash, but the conflict can be especially painful in first-generation immigrant families where the parents have made enormous sacrifices. Lisa Sun-Hee Park, an assistant professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, San Diego, says that every family that moves to the United States to provide opportunities for their children shares a remarkably similar story. The focus is almost always on the future, with little mention of the circumstances that compelled them to move. And even though the parents are the ones working 12-hour days, the children are also under intense pressure to perform in ways that will justify the parents’ sacrifice: study hard, get into top schools and choose careers that offer financial stability without considering personal fulfillment.
The contrast between parents’ dreams and children’s realities can be particularly acute for daughters who have grown up with almost infinite opportunity in the wake of the feminist movement. Their mothers often came from countries where opportunities for women were severely limited, which makes the daughters’ choices even more inexplicable. May Lugemwa’s family left Uganda and the tyranny of Idi Amin when she was 7, ultimately settling in Birmingham, Alabama, where her father was studying for a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Her mother, a math teacher, stood in line for hours to make sure May was enrolled in a progressive grade school. Later, May was accepted at Harvard, where her parents encouraged her to study math or science. May complied at first, majoring in computer science. But then she switched to Visual and Environmental Studies, where she concentrated on film, much to her parents’ bewilderment. Then her plans took an even more surprising turn—back to Uganda. For her senior film thesis, May accompanied her mother on her first trip back, filming her return to the village and visiting the graves of relatives. Then she discovered her mother’s biggest secret: another daughter still in Uganda. The resulting short film, “Former Nationality,” won awards and was even included in a film festival in Uganda. Now 25, May is currently studying at UCLA film school and working as a producer for a nonprofit organization called Meaningful Media. “I sometimes feel guilt,” she says, “having chosen to be an artist, because I know that if I had chosen a scientific background, I could help my parents a lot more—and my relatives back home.”
The struggle to reconcile personal fulfillment with familial obligation is common in this generation of immigrant daughters. Sparlha Swa, 27, for one, believes that following her bliss is the best way to honor her mother’s sacrifice. Juliet Hart brought her three children to the United States from Jamaica for the opportunities. Sparlha and her brothers were straight-A students, and she went on to major in anthropology at Stanford. Sparlha held a series of jobs but soon found she could make money heeding her passion for music. She’s now a singer-songwriter, and has performed around the world. One of her most personal songs is called “Mama,” and includes the lines: “Who worked 16 hours just the other day breaking her back, her pride, her bones? So that we wouldn’t ever have to do the same, never have to groan and moan, when we were on our own.” Sparlha says her mother is now her biggest fan. “My mom’s life has been inspirational because she has served the family instead of serving her own dreams. Because she didn’t get to live her dreams, I have to.”
Sometimes, mothers are called upon to do more than merely accept their daughters’ choices. Going against the traditions and beliefs of their community can be devastating, as Irshad Manji’s mother, Mumtaz, 62, knows firsthand. Her 39-year-old daughter has been hailed as the face of modern Islam, largely because of her controversial 2004 book, “The Trouble With Islam,” a call for Muslims to make their faith more tolerant, especially of women. Irshad was raised in Canada after her parents emigrated from Uganda during Idi Amin’s crackdown on South Asians. She’s openly lesbian and has worked as a broadcast journalist in Toronto. Mumtaz is a devout Muslim who lives by the Five Pillars of Islam and faithfully attends mosque.
Although Mumtaz sometimes wishes her daughter were more conventionally observant, she sticks by her—even in the face of opposition from members of her mosque. When Irshad’s book was published, her mother found out that her imam planned on making it the subject of a four-sermon series, beginning on the last Sunday of Ramadan, when the mosque would be filled with people. Although she knew she would face gossip, Mumtaz attended anyway. “Until this day, there are so many people who don’t talk to me,” Mumtaz says. “But who cares? My daughter comes first.” Even when beliefs clash, love and loyalty endure.
title: “The New Generation Gap” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-26” author: “Ricardo Woodrow”
Three decades after the heyday of the civil rights movement, black America is facing a generation gap, similar to the one that divided white America in the ’60s. This time the wedge is hip-hop, not rock and roll. Like rock, hip-hop defines not just a music but a culture: how you talk, dress, strut and face the world. It cuts a wide swath through households like the Busseys’. During the civil-rights era, Bill marched in the struggle. He believed that things were getting better, he says, ““and I think they did.’’ Now, as they consider their sons, Bill and Joanne aren’t so sure. The older two have dabbled in drugs. The younger two made it through trade school and community college but are still living at home, relying on their parents’ support. Joanne wonders if she’ll ever be able to stop cleaning houses. ““Our generation knew we had to work twice as hard to get anywhere,’’ says Bill. ““Not these kids. They think the world owes them something.’’ In the grocery store, says Joanne, ““the young people will stand right next to me and say m-f this and m-f that, with no respect to me being a woman and an elder.’’ At night, says Bill, ““I lie in bed and hear the kids walking up the street and it’s “nigger’ this and “nigger’ that. I am thinking, “Are we still on the plantation?’ ''
Craig is tired of hearing it. From his massive sound system, the boom of Tupac leaks out into Mahalia. Craig has an associate degree in computer science but works at a meat counter for minimum wage. He feels daunted by racism, an argument for which his parents have little regard. ““They feel like because I don’t have to sit on the back of the bus … racism is gone and our generation is on easy street. But it ain’t that simple.’’ He quotes a line from the rapper Nas: ““Don’t nobody want a nigga having s–t.’’ His parents, he says, ““feel like to be somebody you had to be like the white people. And that’s not real. My generation is standing up for ours.''
The rift runs both deep and wide: half of all African-Americans, 17 million people, are under 30. As in the ’60s, plenty of people don’t fit neatly into either of the generational archetypes. But it is impossible to understand this era–or the ’60s–without understanding the gulf that runs through it. Both generations are frustrated by the inequality that has persisted, and in some areas deepened, long after the gains of the civil-rights movement. And they are pointing fingers. ““Rap music and rap videos–much of it–glorify drugs, crime, disrespect, sexism, weapons, murder,’’ says Alex Habersham, 54, who runs a mentoring program in Macon, Ga. “"[Young people] see it, they like it and they want to do it. When you start talking about culture, you begin to talk about heritage, and we don’t need that to be part of our heritage.’’ Habersham believes that ““there’s a helluva gap, and that’s why we’re not showing continued progress, why we’re retrogressing.''
Some of the skirmishes between generations have been public. On the NBA hardwoods, a new group of brasher, street-mannered stars–Gary Payton, Chris Webber, Allen Iverson–talks unprecedented trash to stunned elders like Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. ““It’s this macho mentality that says, “I made it and I want it all now’,’’ says Jordan. ““The conversation on the court has gotten so bad that when you leave the court you can’t say “What’s happening?’ because of the animosity.’’ On the radio dial, programmers who once counted on a cohesive black audience now talk about a ““rap gap’’: to keep older listeners, urban stations have switched to a ““classic soul’’ format. In the black church, the NAACP and the Urban League, leadership now struggles to be relevant to urban youth. ““My generation failed our children,’’ says the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, 46, of the Azusa Christian Community in Boston. ““We misread our victories. We mistook class-specific successes which were not transferable to the poor. And now the poor are paying us back with a vengeance.''
As in the ’60s, the battle is largely over values. During the civil-rights era, ““our elders spent most of their time and energy dealing with race issues,’’ says Andre Thurman, 23, who works with street organizations (he rejects the word ““gangs’’ as prejudicial) in Kansas City, Mo. ““They didn’t have time to raise us. The fathers of young men are absent.’’ Thurman, whose own father lived in another state, recently organized a forum called Let’s Talk: young people on one side, old on the other. ““The elders are offended by the young people swearing, selling drugs on the corner,’’ he says. ““They’re afraid to address young people because they’re afraid they might be assaulted.’’ The young people, though, are just as critical. Alonzo Washington, 29, who publishes Afrocentric comics–heroes of color–in Kansas City, Kans., says that ““if I’m around any older black person for a while, they’ll say, “You really can think! You have a family!’–like I’m from another planet or something.’’ Washington, who was raised by a single mother, charges that the older generation has failed to mentor. ““You can condemn kids from a pulpit. But a criminal will tell them they got some style, tell them how to make money. Is a preacher going to do that, or a doctor? No.''
THE GENERATIONS ARE DIVIDED not just by music and style but by history. Elinor Tatum, 26, has strong ties to her elders; her father is grooming her to succeed him at the helm of the Harlem-based weekly Amsterdam News. The difference between her generation and her father’s, she says, ““is that then they had hope.’’ In rapid succession, the civil-rights generation brought the collapse of legal segregation and the explosive rise of the black middle class. The hip-hop generation has been raised with progress, but also pain. For the rising middle classes, who benefited from integration and affirmative action, opportunities have never been better. The number of black families with incomes above $50,000 has more than quadrupled since 1967. But for those left behind, the world is measurably harder. Between 1967 and 1987, cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia lost more than half of their manufacturing jobs. By 1988, one in four black children lived below half the poverty level. Integration, which was supposed to be a pathway to equality, allowed successful blacks to flee the inner city, breaking down communities and leaving increased concentrations of poverty behind. With success, says Lloyd Daniel, 44, a state representative in Missouri, ““we became loyal to the system as opposed to challenging it. A whole landslide of first Negroes rode into the sunset and left the black nation behind.’’ For black males under 25, the chances of being murdered nearly doubled in the ’80s, and are close to 10 times those of white teens. On political battlefronts–welfare, affirmative action, financial aid–the generation has tasted mostly rollback and resentment. Instead of the nation’s conscience, the hip-hop generation often finds itself the nation’s scapegoat: the public enemy, the nigga you love to hate.
The generation has grown up largely without leaders. Malcolm and King were dead before most hip-hoppers were born. ““When I think of [Jesse Jackson],’’ says Dwight Tucker, 21, a junior at UCLA, ““I think of a struggle that can’t be won that way anymore.’’ The NAACP is still recovering from the taint of scandal. The black church has receded, especially for young men. ““How many churches can a Snoop Doggy Dogg go to and feel welcome?’’ asks the Rev. Bernard Woodside Jr., 31, of the Inner-City Ministries in Hempstead, N.Y. He feels the elder clergy haven’t let his generation in, ““and we’ve regressed because of that. Back in the day, a Suge Knight [the notorious CEO of the equally notorious Death Row record label] would have been controlled through the leaders in the church. Now there’s no one to sit and lovingly talk to him.’’ For some, Louis Farrakhan has filled the void. Still controversial among many older blacks, and threatening to whites, Farrakhan has been embraced by hip-hop culture. ““I love Farrakhan with- out question or reservation,’’ says Jason Broom, 26, who works with gangs in Kansas City, Mo. ““He’s a strong, stand-up black man. I don’t practice his religion, but I support him. He never turned on us on the street. He’s for turning us into men.''
The generations have also experienced racism differently. Harvard psychologist Alvin F. Poussaint, 62, argues that his generation struggled against nastier persecution, only to find ““these kids complaining more of racism than they did. I don’t think the black middle class accepts that.’’ Yet many young people argue that racism has merely changed its shape. ““For our parents, racism was much more overt,’’ says Shauntae Brown, 26, a graduate student at the University of Kansas. ““For us it’s more subtle: being followed in a store, or not being able to get a cab.’’ At Washington Park in South-Central Los Angeles, the shadow of prejudice comes between Na’Rai Bowen, 18, and her boyfriend, Timothy Birdsong, 19. Bowen, a freshman at Cal State Long Beach, wants him to go to college like her; he is dubious. Because of discrimination, he feels, even a college degree offers no guarantees. ““I need and want to make money now.''
IT IS THIS HARSHER REALITY, AND this sense of rejection, that finds its unique, soulful expression in hip-hop. Consider the aspirational group names of the ’60s: the Supremes, the Stylistics, the Miracles. Now consider their hip-hop counterparts: Naughty by Nature, Tha Dogg Pound, Niggas With Attitude. The greeting ““brother’’ has passed through ““homeboy’’ to the historically contentious ““nigga.’’ Thirty years after the battles were supposed to have been won, hip-hop culture is impatient, unwilling to defer gratification. ““We recognize more than [our elders] know the incredible job they did,’’ says Bill Stephney, 34, who runs a small black record company. ““But you cannot celebrate for 30 years scoring a touchdown. Not when they’re still playing the game.''
At the Dorchester Youth Center in Boston, the radiance of Dr. King’s dream is hard to find. Each weekday the DYC is a haven for dozens of teenagers. They are multiracial (the most famous alumni are the New Kids on the Block) and largely fatherless. On a January afternoon the center is bustling, a tumult of noise and adolescent motion. The language is clean; anyone caught swearing has to do push-ups. A group of boys sits in a circle eating Honeycomb cereal. Everyone agrees on one point: Tupac Shakur. They all believe he is alive.
““He’s in Africa.''
““He’s in Puerto Rico.''
““He’s in jail, about to do 40 years for faking his death.''
How do you know he’s alive?
““He made a movie.''
““He has a new album.''
““Makaveli [his pseudonym on the album] spelled backward is “I’m Alive’.''
No, it isn’t.
““I saw it on BET. On MTV.''
Few topics so clearly divide the generations as Tupac Amaru Shakur, who died of gunshot wounds last Sept. 13, at the age of 25. In his embattled life Shakur picked a world of fights, both on record and off, and served time in prison for sexual abuse. To many elders he was simply, in the words of New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch, ““a charismatic celebrator of scum’’ who ““represented the very worst inclinations in American youth.''
But hip-hop fans saw more in Shakur. ““Pac was the realest nigga in a world full of fakes,’’ says the rapper Ice Cube, 27. ““That’s why people won’t let him die.’’ For all his wanton machismo, Tupac rapped passionately about the strength of black women and the loneliness of not having a father. Quincy Jones, 64, a music producer and founder of the rap magazine Vibe, is uniquely close to the hip-hop generation. But when he learned his daughter Kidada was dating Tupac, he says, ““I thought, “Oh, my God, my daughter is with a gangsta’.’’ But after meeting Shakur and reading some of his poetry, he came around. ““Tupac isn’t alone,’’ he says. ““There are many young people out there with just as much to offer, but it’s hidden by an anger that has to be dealt with.’’ Hip-hop arose as the only acceptable voice for this anger. Most important, says Matthew McDaniel, 31, a documentary filmmaker in South-Central Los Angeles, the music is ““a lesson in self-dependency. It’s made by black people for black people. You’re welcome to watch, but we’re not going to change ourselves for you.''
In his navy blue Chevrolet Suburban (license plate: STEEL), Shaquille O’Neal basks in this insouciance, boosting the stereo so loud that you can’t taste your gum in the front seat. Ice Cube beats out a mantra for both O’Neal and the generation: ““The world is mine, nigga, back up/I gots to get mine before I act up.’’ It is a plaint of im- patient materialism, dissatisfaction that comes with the failures of the post-integration era. O’Neal, who is sidelined with a knee injury, has his own rap album, his third, in stores now. He bobs his head, a 25-year-old multimillionaire listening to another millionaire (Ice Cube calls himself a ““seven-figga nigga’’) spin romantic tales of life and death in the ghetto.
THIS IS THE LICENSE OF A NEWLY moneyed class. The most prominent faces of the civil-rights generation carried themselves with austere righteousness. ““We marched in suits and ties, carrying Bibles with our books,’’ says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, 55. ““We knew we were creating a contrast with the white police with billy clubs.’’ The hip-hop generation, like Shaq, is funkier than that. ““We have different ways of expressing [ourselves] because of the things we’ve gone through and seen our parents go through,’’ he says. ““Why we take flak for it I don’t know.’’ Like many of his peers, in hip-hop or sport, Shaq skips the humble bromides that have traditionally made powerful black stars palatable to white people. With million-dollar endorsement deals in their pockets, they play rough for a public eager to consume the roughest. In an era of rising middle-class fortunes, hip-hop culture is aggressively, and commercially, ghettocentric. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes in ““The Future of the Race,’’ ““Culturally speaking, the “street’ has been deemed the repository of all that is real, that is “black’.’’ For many elders this is an affront. ““It is a sin for us to be recycling a stereotype forced on us from outside our community,’’ says Jackson. To see a culture that calls young people ““niggas’’ and ““bitches,’’ he says, would have made Dr. King ““embarrassed and humiliated.''
James Bernard, 31, rejects the charge of romanticizing the ghetto. In a pricey Manhattan restaurant, Bernard wears his head shaved, his gear hip-hop correct. He is a Harvard Law grad, a consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation. Instead of practicing law, Bernard and three friends started a hip-hop magazine, The Source. ““The black middle class hasn’t really left the ghetto,’’ he says. ““Your parents or their parents were dirt poor. [Also], there’ve never been any values to replace it. Either you identify with white society, and that’s disgustingly empty–not to mention you’ll be rejected and go insane–or you look for something that’s rich and real.''
In 1961 Ralph Ellison predicted that after the civil-rights movement, there would come a time when ““Negroes are going to be wandering around because, you see, we have had this thing thrown at us for so long that we haven’t had a chance to discover what in our background is really worth preserving. For the first time, we are given a choice . . . And this is where the real trouble is going to start.’’ Thirty-six years later, his question–what about us is worth preserving?–drives the battles over Ebonics, or welfare reform, or the Million Man March. And it is the essence of the generation gap. Hip-hop offers only a partial answer. For all its subversive virtues, it is not a culture of continuity or hope. It is about thriving in Armageddon, not transcending it.
The generation gap, meanwhile, shows few signs of abating. Dion Turner, 22, a senior at Morehouse College, tutors junior-high-school students; he is most troubled by the gap between his cohort and theirs. ““They have this self-image problem where they don’t see anything they do of value,’’ he says. ““I don’t understand them. And we’re just a few years apart.’’ After the ’60s, white hippies could, and ultimately did, drop back in to positions of privilege. Some less advantaged hip-hoppers won’t have that option. ““I’ll be honest with you,’’ says the rapper and actress Queen Latifah, 27. ““I get depressed sometimes when I look at what the future seems to hold for us.’’ This is the ““real trouble’’ that Ellison predicted. And its time has come.
