Hey ... I'm a big brown long haired red skinned Indigenous person ... you can see me coming from a mile away.
I've had people scream, yell, say, suggest, comment, off the cuff, passive-aggressively, overtly, covertly, obviously, secretly and blatantly be racist to me behind my back and to my face many many times ... more often passively but a few times openly and blatantly. I've had some pretty ugly things said to me either directly or indirectly because of the colour of my skin and what I look like.
I think some old white guy with a good station in life can handle being called a 'boomer' online.
How is this helpful? Either using slurs is wrong or its not. Take a guess what happens when you give the majority a reason to dismiss your objections to their behaviour.
You are making it more difficult to fix the problems that exist because these 2 comments only tell bad actors that they dont want equality they want superiority. Why would a group that has privilege give up that privilege just to be treated as badly as they treat others?
Sure its ducking rediculous that this is the thing that gets a reaction, and not the endless horrors that have been done to people over history, but as long as we are willing to say, "fuck YOUR problems because you have the wrong colour of skin" you arent going to fix a damn thing, merely exchange one wrong position with another.
I mean "hate crime", I don't know, but it is ageism. Not to mention this whole boomer vs millennial thing is such an obvious ploy by the corporate media to throw up another distracting infight to prevent us from fighting the real enemy, billionaires CEOs.
I don't know about you but I have no special hate in my heart for my parents. Yeah their generation messed some things up but trust me our kids will find things to blame us for 20-30 years from now.
I can't speak for others but the reason I've used boomer as a slur, if you can even call it that, in the past is because they don't see the fight you mentioned as necessary. You can't be allies with someone who doesn't think there's a problem to be fixed. It would be one thing if we were fighting the same battle in different ways but that's not what's happening. They're actively helping the other side win.
And this is why it's, in my opinion, correct to call it a slur. When you refer to a certain part of the population, in the context of calling them the enemy, not based on their beliefs or actions but their age, that sounds questionable. Just as it would be if you said the same thing about a racial group, a sexual preference, a religious group, etc.
Rare attitude. Americans in particular seem to be obsessed with gen wars.
The tragic irony of people saying “the boomers had it all, they don’t know how hard we got it” is that they already becoming the old person that says “back in my day….” And they don’t see it.
I really get the idea it's fueled by the media over there. You see so many American articles about heartless boomers and lazy millennials. Whether it's just rage bait to sell ads or something more, I don't know.
Contemporary generational labels have arbitrary boundaries and their members would be just as arbitrary. Generational labels applied in an historic context are able to categorize in more meaningful ways around specific events or beliefs that the generation demonstrated. Without that demonstration its the new astrology.