When Getting Old Isn’t Pretty

I was a teenager during the 1960s when the world was changing rapidly. I witnessed the Flower Power movement, protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Gay and Lesbian Movement. I was a feminist before I had a name for it. As a girl who had to clean house after school, while my male cousins played outside, I would ask why this injustice existed.

As a young bride of 19, I would ask the older women why I had to fix my husband’s plate when he knew what he wanted. When the black school kids in my hometown were given the white kids’ old school, I asked why the white kids got a new school but we got their dilapidated one.

I was always a rebel in a sense. When I would ask the questions above and many others that questioned racism and sexism, my mother used to say,” It’s a good thing you were not born earlier. You would have received a public whipping every day.” Or she would tell me to keep silent, so I didn’t get us all killed. It is no wonder I became a sociology professor!

Now, to witness the dismantling of the educational system and to watch the Church severely divided by politics, and possibly dying out to younger generations, I wonder what we fought so hard for and how it could all be coming apart. I never expected to live long enough to see the backlash that we are enduring today. But maybe that is the problem. I worry about my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. If America continues to head backward in its cultural shift, that will mean younger generations will have to fight the good fight all over again.

As a 70-something, this is a painful time to live through. It is a moment in time when you question if injustice and inequality are American values that can’t be unhinged. I love my country, and for the last 60 years, I have enjoyed seeing women rise beyond the kitchen and into the boardroom. I benefited from Affirmative Action, securing jobs that were previously held only by white males. I enjoyed seeing so many young women in my classes with dreams that far exceeded anything their grandmothers would have thought possible.

This isn’t a post to criticize, but to mourn. It’s hard to live through such tremendous social change, only to now see the divisions in the land that threaten to make America a nation unable to accept equal opportunity for all. I hope to live long enough to see a change come.

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