‘Ok, boomer’ is just as bad as racist and sexist slurs

The phrase “ok, boomer” has become popular lately. It’s a sarcastic response to anyone belonging to the so-called baby boom generation. It’s meant to be disrespectful and dismissive. It’s a bigoted thing to say to someone. It’s just as bigoted as saying, “ok, darky” to a person of color or “ok, darling” to a woman.

I’m probably older than you. I was born in 1964 and chances are, you were born sometime after that. As I write this, I’m 55 years old. You are probably younger than me.

Because of the year in which I was born, I am classified as belonging to the before-mentioned baby boom generation. That was news to me. I always believed baby boomers were born at the end of World War Two.

At the end of the war, people were so optimistic about the future they decided to procreate like drunken rabbits on shore leave from the rabbit navy. The thing is, I was born nearly 20 years after World War Two. My parents, the people who conceived me, were born immediately after World War Two. They are baby boomers. How can people and their children belong to the same generation?

It doesn’t really matter. I am a baby boomer. I looked it up on Wikipedia and Ask Jeeves.

What I really, really don’t understand is how it’s socially acceptable to debase a whole swath of people based on nothing more than the year in which they were born.

View this post on Instagram

Let’s get it trending #okboomer

A post shared by Sam Hughes (@dang_1t_sam) on

It turns out as a baby boomer, I’m responsible for all the ills our society faces: climate change, the aftereffect of the sub-prime housing crisis, endless wars in the middle east, and even the rising level of student debt.

At first, I didn’t understand the last one, the rising level of student debt. I then learned as a boomer, I got to go to college for next to nothing because college tuition was so cheap in my day. This was news to me. I graduated from high school in 1982. I could not go to college because I could not afford it and my parents had zero interest in helping me pay for it. Instead, I had to join the Air Force unless I wanted to make a career out of working at Burger King.

Yes, I had it pretty sweet in my late teens and early twenties. The years I should have been attending college, I spent in the Air Force stationed first in Mississippi and then the Philippines. Good times!

You can’t judge everyone by their age. Not only is it wrong, but it’s also highly inaccurate. For example, you can’t blame me for the sub-prime housing crisis any more than you can blame a random black person for high crime rates. both are casting negative judgment about someone solely on when they were born or how they were born. The first one is ageist and the second is racist. Both are bigoted.

There are even songs featuring the ageist slur. How sweet!

I think the whole thing is ridiculous. When I see someone use ok, boomer I know they are a bigot. I don’t care how woke they pretend to be. If they use that phrase, they probably also use other bigotted phrases when nobody’s looking. I’d bet money on it and I’m not a betting man.

It’s been my experience with bigots is they are almost never single-issue bigots. If they make disparaging comments about people who don’t share their skin color, they usually also make similar remarks about women and gay people.

It’s what bigots do.

2 thoughts on “‘Ok, boomer’ is just as bad as racist and sexist slurs”

  1. You don’t know what oppression is, if you think being told “Ok Boomer,” is the same as being a woman or minority in this society. Or, like the kids say:

    OK BOOMER

    1. Try applying for jobs you’re more than qualified for when you’re 57 and not even getting a response. Why do you think they want to know when you graduated high school?

      I never had a problem finding a job. Then I got old. Employers want to hire people. They just don’t want to hire old people. It’s discrimination.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top