Out of Touch Carnivore

We’re approaching Thanksgiving here in the US of A. One of the common tropes about the holiday is getting together with family and having to put up with someone’s old racist grandparents. Or uncle. That got me thinking. What out of touch thing will my generation do when we’re the old grandparents?

Changes in society happen slowly. No matter how much you might want change, or how much you might resist change, change happens. For, fortunately many but sadly not all, of my generation*, the idea of old school open racism makes no sense. Our parents went through the Civil Rights movement and by the time we were growing up society had decided open racism was unacceptable. We grew up not seeing it and learning about that change. That’s why when we do see it out in the open, its very uncomfortable.

*Note: generation is by definition, a loosely defined generalization. 

Now, racism didn’t die in the 1960’s. It just shifted to a more subtle breed. But that’s part of the process. A hundred years before that we had outright slavery. Then it became institutional racism under Jim Crow laws. Then the slow reversal. Now we’re in the shadow resurgence of racism where lots of people are racist but don’t think they are. And we have a lot of non-overt institutional racism so its much harder to fight because its subtle. From here we’ll either further eradicate it or cycle back around to the beginning. Juries still out.

For my generation, our battle was against open homophobia. When I was a kid, ‘gay’ was used as an insult. No one wanted to be thought of as gay. AID’s was a big scary thing and you got that by being gay.

But over time people started coming out as gay. AID’s education got better so we knew how it really spread. Media started to portray gay characters. Early attempts were crinchy by today’s standards but groundbreaking for the time. I never hated homosexuality but until the shift started I had passively accepted the given norm that it was gross and wrong. I had never bothered to think about it.

Outright harming of homosexuals had gone away as being acceptable earlier. People were starting to accept homosexuals as being, you know, actual people.  So the battle shifted from outright homophobia to institutionalized homophobia. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was implemented.  Defense of Marriage Act was passed. Then on to state constitutional bans on gay marriage. This was the Jim Crow era of homophobia.

As we grew up into voting adults the momentum shifted. In a few short years those anti-gay marriage amendments were overturned and the Supreme Court ruled you can’t deny gay people the right to marry. Now we have a presidential candidate whose openly gay and that’s not really even a thing people are talking about. Homophobia isn’t gone but it has retreated. I’m sure it will come rearing its ugly head back just like racism has but hopefully for my kids generation, the idea of hating someone because of who they love will be as ridiculous as hating someone because they have different color skin.

So what’s the thing his generation is going to face? What’s the thing that I think is perfectly normal, my son will grow to think of as wrong, and I’ll struggle to overcome as an out of touch old person?

I think eating meat is a candidate. Being a vegetarian is often a thing that is mocked now. But it’s also gaining acceptance. I’m acknowledging that the idea of the way we harvest animals feels quite monstrous when you look at it objectively. But it hasn’t stopped me from enjoying steak. Or hamburgers. Or endless buckets of fried chicken tenders.

My son isn’t a big meat eater. He loves chicken nuggets but beyond that he’s not really into it. Part of that is just childhood pickiness. But I’m not really pushing him to eat meat either. And I’ve noticed shades of this among other kids. It’s not a massive movement to make them vegetarians. But there is a bit of a transition happening.

Will one Thanksgiving, when my son is grown, he’ll come home, we’ll have made a turkey and he’ll have to quietly explain this to his kids? And then, like me and my sisters did to my grandmother about smoking, they’ll badger us until we never eat meat in front of them again?

Maybe. But I’ve recognized this potential. For me to really become the out of touch racist grandpa, it will have to be something more subtle. More ingrained into my personality. Something that seems more natural. Something I haven’t even considered the implications of yet.