“I feel like post-college, pre-career is an underratedly sucky phase of life,” my cousin said to me this Thanksgiving. I sighed with relief. He'd taken pity, releasing me from my attempts to spin general hopelessness into some sort of ‘I’m moving forward’ narrative. “Yeah. It sucks a lot,” I said. I don’t know what I am doing. I’m underemployed. I’m clinically anxious and depressed (long-term struggles exacerbated by the aforementioned). I’m not sure about where to go next. Career-oriented jobs feel impossible to get -- they say they like me, but decide to go with someone with more experience. I’m applying to grad school with relatively little hope of getting in, and limited self-assurance that it is truly what I want to do the next four years of my life. I’m not alone in this situation. Post-college depression and anxiety are documented phenomena, marked by joblessness, addiction, confusion, loneliness, and fear. For the most educated generation (34% with a bachelor’s degree) entering entering the working world, this negative experience is not uncommon. Many young people don’t recognize that they are depressed, just that they are always frustrated or having trouble focusing, feel tired all the time even when they get enough sleep, or have lost interest in the things they used to love. Advice abounds around the internet -- suggestions for keeping your head up, embracing uncertainty, and just working a little harder you lazy, entitled millennial. Many of the articles discussing my generation -- a widely decried, and defended, group -- say this situation (often cited as a “phase,” like a health-kick or fleeting interest in a particular TV show) is a result of “idealistic hopes about life after the diploma. Expecting that they will get hired into a top position at their dream company while earning exorbitant amounts of money.” The phrasing of this particular quote is a bit polemic, telling the reader to dismiss depressed recent graduates’ issues as their own fault -- they’re just expecting the world handed to them on a silver platter. In more realistic language, however, this expectation of a college degree leading to steady and gainful employment is a part of the American Dream. Take, for example, my family. My immigrant grandmother didn’t finish high school, but supported her family driving school buses, and making wise financial choices along the way. My mother finished college, went on to get her master’s, and has supported my brother and I through her work as a teacher and now as an employee at a university. I have graduated college and… I’m working at a gym scanning membership cards. The idea that each generation builds on the last is a part of the American dream, but it’s not a reality for many young people today. Recently, a group of Ivy League researchers published an article showing that, “adjusting for inflation, slightly more than half (51%) of today’s 30-year-olds earn more than their parents did at the same age." While it sounds impressive at first, it's a small number when compared to the 92% of people born around 1940 earning more than their parents did at age 30. According to Pew Research Group, my generation is the first “in the modern era to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate predecessor generations (Gen Xers and Boomers) had at the same stage of their life cycles.” That is to say, as the graph moves right, toward today, “it points down like a ski slope.” I can’t speak for my entire generation, but amongst my friends the oft-cited millennial expectation of post-college greatness does not hold true. We’ve long been aware of the ski slope. We were shown it in the ‘tough love’ of our scary high school guidance counselors pushing us into too many extracurriculars for the sake of our resume. We saw it in the disapproving looks we received from older white men at our parents’ holiday work parties or church functions when they found out we were planning on studying anything besides engineering or nursing. We saw it too in the “You’ll find something!” from these older white men’s well-meaning wives. It's sometimes difficult to grin and bear it when the unemployment rate for college-educated millennials is 3.8 percent, more than double the 1.4% of the Silent generation before them, when all these disapproving older white men came of age. Despite our reputation, many of my peers don’t expect good things from the world. We know that messages to “follow your passion” aren’t realistic -- we can’t all be the Next Big Thing, especially when there are about 4.6 billion more people competing for the top spots than there were when our grandparents were our age. We read the news. We apply to ‘entry level’ positions requiring 3+ years of experience. We have massive amounts of student loan debt, quadrupled in the last decade, that we are trying to pay off with our hourly wage. We know that this debt has been accrued for a degree that carries the same weight a high school diploma did thirty years ago. We fight for unpaid internships that will give us that experience, while forcing us to accumulate even more debt. We struggle to find good jobs, and we struggle to defend ourselves in the struggle. Older adults have two easy, disparaging responses to struggling millennials -- to stereotype young people as entitled and useless, or to point at unfilled non-degree jobs. It’s a lot easier than talking about the economic complexities of globalization and automation that are changing the job market as we speak. Over the last few decades income has stagnated for just about everyone, not just a particular, lazy generation. Yes, some non-degree jobs are short of workers and, in the short term, it might benefit young people to enter into these professions. However, given the future of automation, they aren’t likely to last long. Take, for example, trucking. It doesn’t require a degree, and there are plenty of job openings in the sector. Lacking prestige, however, it wouldn’t win much approval from those who recommend it, and it is also a job likely to disappear within the next five years given the driverless future. Most non-degree jobs are the same. My generational peers who graduated during the Great Recession may never make up the difference in lost income and opportunity. My graduating class has had the advantage of receiving our degrees during a time of low unemployment and a generally healthy economy, and we still struggle to find gainful employment. While the current job market is, at large, doing well, it’s not so great for young people. Great Recession business decisions, to outsource low-level work and automate as much as possible, have eliminated a massive number of entry level jobs from the hiring system that is still in operation today. There’s no such a thing as “working your way up the ladder” when the bottom rungs have disappeared. A typical ‘entry level’ position requires two to five years of experience, and with a relentlessly crowded job market, young people are competing with more experienced workers for these low-level jobs. It appears that the ‘entry-level’ modifier in a job posting essentially translates to “we want young blood” -- a thinly veiled demonstration of the ageism that is also a growing problem in the U.S. job market. As of November of 2016, unemployment rates for workers 20 - 24 years old was at 8.1%, almost double that of the national unemployment rate. As recently as July of 2015, the 20 - 24 year old unemployment rate was 10.0 -- the same rate as national unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. For some people, college was something of a ‘golden era’ in which they were surrounded by close friends, had mountains of freedom, and little responsibility. Graduation can put a stop to that experience, resulting in “a vast expanse of free days with too much time to think about how overeducated and underexperienced you are.” Friends are spread out across the country, and financial and familial responsibilities begin to weigh heavy. For myself and others like me, college was not a particularly fun experience -- I had few friends, struggled with mental illness, and felt a crushing weight of responsibility on my shoulders most days. And still, even without the big drop off in daily life circumstances that many of my peers experience post-graduation, I feel as if I am in a “hopelessly long queue at a soup kitchen, where the meal they’re serving is [my] future… waking up each day with a giant question mark over [my] life and feeling this immense pressure to do something with all that [I] learned.” A major aspect of post-college depression, according to both research and my own experience, is a loss of independence. This is in part due to moving back in with parents, as many graduates of my generation do. The need to adhere to a different set of rules, tell someone when your schedule changes, ask to borrow the car, and put in requests ahead of time for shared groceries is quite an adjustment. Another contributing factor is a sudden deprivation of intellectual autonomy. One of the main objectives of many colleges and universities is to teach their students to “think independently and to be creative in their problem solving,” Many college students do this successfully, then graduate only to find themselves in the same pay-grade they were in high school, working jobs with little creativity, little input in processes, and an understandably resultant sense of personal constraint. My generation has also been taught that every decision is critical to our future success, with little room for error. We had to go to the right college, be involved with multiple clubs, get good grades, land an internship with a major company, and make deep and important connections with everyone who mattered -- professors, advisers, career counselors, etc. If we wanted to get into the right college, we had to excel in the right high school extracurriculars, take as many AP classes as we could, work a part-time job, volunteer consistently, and get at least a 4.2 GPA. We also had to make sure we had a significant other, went to all the dances and football games, and formed great relationships with friends because, after all, this was the time of our lives. We had it so easy. In order to manage all of this in high school, we had to get started by 4th or 5th grade at the latest -- sports, choir, band, and math club, good grades, Honors English, goal setting, and a life plan. This was the way to success. To do otherwise would surely end in disaster: no job after graduation, destined for a life of misery and low income, for which our future children would suffer. According to the narrative we’ve been taught, our presence in the category of jobless graduate means that we did something wrong. We messed up the life plan, and the future isn’t looking very bright. For a lot of us, misery was expected to come with the territory of post-college joblessness -- a territory we tried really, really hard to avoid. I think this lifelong emphasis on the gravity of each action has led many of my peers to believe that the end is nigh if we take a step in the ‘wrong’ direction -- take a job in marketing only to find out we hate it, go to graduate school for a subject that turns out not to be our passion after all. Feeling like we messed up the plan already, seeing as we are in this jobless/underemployed state, we’re scared to try anything else. What if it puts us somewhere even worse? Even more miserable? The endless advice from all sides isn’t much help. Mostly it’s paralyzing, sending the thought spiral into “Maybe I am rushing the career thing too fast. Maybe I should be exploring more or traveling? Go to grad school? I have no idea! Afraid to make any choice right now!” It’s a high stakes world that has been shown to us -- it doesn't surprise me that some of my generation (the decried “lazy and entitled” millennials) have simply stepped out of the ring and taken a lower-key option. The road ahead of my generation is incredibly high stress and, so far as we can generally see, has a pretty high chance of leading to narrative failure. As members of a decried generation, we millennials often feel blamed for our situation, and regardless of whether or not we are truly culpable, guilt and shame are difficult burdens to bear. Many requests are made of young people. As a one woman put it to the New York Times, “It’s somewhat terrifying to think about all the things I’m supposed to be doing in order to ‘get somewhere’ successful: ‘Follow your passions, live your dreams, take risks, network with the right people, find mentors, be financially responsible, volunteer, work, think about or go to grad school, fall in love and maintain personal well-being, mental health and nutrition.’ When is there time to just be and enjoy?” I’m not saying we don’t have leisure time, and neither, I think, is this young woman. We have the time to watch a show on Netflix, but we don’t feel like we have the time to enjoy where we are at in life. It’s a never ending quest to do more, to win approval, to win the game of success -- and maybe it’s success by someone else’s definition. While the economic factors promoting this difficult stage of life are not exclusive to any particular demographic, I think the overall identity crisis may, in part, be tied to privilege. These complaints that I have voiced, while heartfelt and real, are also the complaints of those with considerable advantage. To have attended and completed college, to be allowed to have an identity crisis, to waffle between careers -- all of this is evidence that I do not have to take the first job that comes along. I have the ability to use my support networks of well-off parents and connected family to find a path that works for me. According to Jennifer Lynn Tanner at Rutgers University, “If you spend this time exploring and you get yourself on a pathway that really fits you, then there’s going to be this snowball effect of finding the right fit, the right partner, the right job, the right place to live. The less you have at first, the less you’re going to get this positive effect compounded over time. You’re not going to have the same acceleration.” To have the time and money to find the right fit is an advantage that many people do not have. On the flip side, however, the pressure to succeed, succeed, succeed with an ivy league degree is often felt most acutely in areas of privilege, marked by wealth and whiteness. While pressure comes to all people in all demographics, it is no secret that those with particular advantage have a particular brand of unhappiness, evidenced by “disturbingly high rates of substance use, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, cheating, and stealing.” So what do we do now? I’m no expert at moving forward, but here are some things that have been helping me: 1. Normalize it You’re not alone. You’re normal. Your feelings are valid. I hope the information above has helped cement that. It’s hard for almost everyone. It sucks, and that’s normal and sucky. Graduation is a major life transition, and a “job search, change in relationships, [and] change in residence” are all things that cause everyone, regardless of age or circumstance, some anxiety. 2. Realize that having a plan or a job, moving, etc, may not fix it Depression and anxiety are real things, and while some people experience a lifting of symptoms with a change in circumstance, that’s not always the case. Hard things don’t always disappear. It’s important to recognize that and to focus on the feelings more than the circumstances. Often this focus will help provide a sense of control, as you tend to have a better grasp on your own inner workings than the inner workings of the HR firm at the company you applied to. 3. Get help If counseling is something financially/logistically possible for you, I recommend looking into it. It has helped me and a lot of other people. If you can get in to see a doctor, I recommend this also. They have a lot of resources you can’t find on the internet. If professional help is out of the question, talk to a friend or family member. It’s often really hard to do, especially the first time, but it’s important. 4. Take care of yourself Shower, eat, sleep, exercise, socialize. These things matter more than you know. If you’re capable of doing them, do them. I spent multiple days in a row this last summer in the same pair of pajamas, staring at my computer screen, job searching in desperation. It was awful. Don’t be me. 5. Do Something You Love Maybe you hate your job. Maybe you have no job. Maybe it's just meh. Regardless, you’re not spending your days doing something you love. Try to make time for things you do love -- hobbies and projects that bring you joy and fulfillment. If you like drawing or writing or running or building things in the garage, do those things. It helps to disassociate the core of your identity from your occupation and future prospects. Try to “create your own escapes from the mundane.” 6. Try Not to Play the Comparison Game You and your friend/classmate/cousin/etc. are different people. You aren’t living their life and they’re not living yours. That’s a good thing. If you must play the comparison game, I suggest looking up what some of today’s highly successful people were doing in their 20s. Tina Fey was working at a YMCA. Oprah was fired. Lin-Manuel Miranda was working the register at McDonald’s. #First7Jobs is an encouraging hashtag. Thanks to zhaolifang for the art!
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I am a white woman, but I don’t always look it. My hair is dark brown, very curly, and very big. My eyes are dark brown too. Find me in summer in my California hometown and my olive complexion, caramelized by the scorching heat of the Sacramento Valley, presents itself as a deep shade of golden-tan.
I’ve been asked my entire life what I am, racially/ethnically speaking. I’ve had many a hair stylist pose the “What’s your heritage?” question as they piece apart the mass of spirals atop my head. In the tenth grade a black classmate said to me, sitting across the table in Spanish class, “What are you? Cause you gotta be something with hair like that.” My freshman year of college I made a comment about my race to my Asian roommates and our friend, a white guy, looked over at me in shock. “Wait,” he said. “You’re white?” When I studied abroad my junior year, one of my new roommates asked, as I stood in front of the mirror putting on makeup, “What are you?” Used to the question by this point, I filled in the blank. What are you racially, because you don’t fit my paradigms. First off, it is pretty much always best to let a person of color volunteer information about their ethnicity, as asking the question is, in most contexts, othering -- making them feel as though they inherently do not belong. Beyond this, however, it is interesting to note how often people, and in my experience, particularly white people, ask this question, seemingly uncomfortable with a person until they can fit them into one of their racial boxes. The assumption of a white norm, that is, treating white skin and white culture as though it is the default or inherently non-racial/non-ethnic, allows white power and its wielders (i.e. white people with white privilege) to cast people of color as The Other and has, historically, allowed them to create what we today call race. With parameters of race (a socially constructed concept) currently centered around certain genetic presentations (i.e. skin color, hair texture, nose shape, eye shape, etc.), a diverse society is more difficult to categorize. Many people, regardless of biological background, don’t fit into neat racial boxes based solely on physical appearance -- myself included. This defiance of categorization makes most people who have internalized the troublingly categorical rhetoric of race uncomfortable. White people, who have historically held the power to determine socially operational racial categories (i.e. what we call people who look/act/live a certain way, and what that means about how they are thought about and treated) and place people into them, seem to struggle more than others with this defiance of categorization. Now, I want to be clear that I have experienced what I consider the full swath of white privilege (save, perhaps, the microaggression of being asked about my race). I have never, to my knowledge, been discriminated against because of my perceived race. I have generations of white wealth behind me. I attended good schools and lived in well-off white suburbs. I am not followed in stores. I do not worry about my race keeping me from any opportunity. I operate with native comfort in white spaces and do not feel pushed out of or unwelcome in any organizations or institutions because of my race, ethnicity, or culture. I am privileged, and incredibly so. It is interesting to think about what role my sometimes-ambiguous racial appearance plays in my daily life. This last October I was taking a flight out of Oakland airport, headed to Minneapolis to visit friends. That morning it seemed like everyone I interacted with was on my team. The young woman at the parking lot kiosk went out of her way to help me sort out my ticket. The shuttle driver waited for me to grab a cup of coffee even though all of the other passengers were already on board (and fairly impatient). The TSA agent chatted with me about my morning and directed me to an empty line that I had not realized was open. The on-break airport janitor smiled and sat down next to me in the waiting area, pulling out her breakfast sandwich and digging in, comfortable in my presence. A few hours later, thinking about my experience while squished between two strangers in economy class seating, I realized that all of the people I had interacted with that morning had been people of color. In our interactions, our gestures, our smiles, there had been a comfort of relationship. They had shown me kindness that went above and beyond normal levels. There was something between us that felt like a rhythm of recognition. I have heard friends and media personalities, authors and journalists, talk about the “black nod,” an acknowledgement between two black people in a predominantly white space that both of them are there, that they see each other. It is a recognition of visibility, an acknowledgement of identity in a climate in which black people, or at least their blackness, is ignored for the comfort and power of a white majority. I suspect that the exceptional kindness I regularly receive from people of color is an iteration of this public acknowledgement. I have exchanged nods and smiles with people of color that I do not know in many public spaces. If I am in a predominantly white group and a person of color needs to address us, I am usually the person that they come to. I am safe, I think, because of my coloring. The person approaching likely assumes that a darker individual will be apt to understand different cultural rhythms of communication, because cultural identity is something that darker people have had to think about. People who look like each other, who are identified as members of the same group, even if that group be as wide as the generic and often statistically inaccurate “minority”, regularly have shared experiences. The experience of being a person in the United States, and the world at large, is not uniform. Unlike people of color, I do not have the experience of being teased for a particular aspect-of-self associated with my race or culture -- an accent or dialect, a facial feature, a food. I do not have the experience of being called a “credit to my race” or a touted as a member of a “model minority” when I experience success. I have not experienced negative stereotyping about my academic abilities or thought of as an “at risk” student (in fact, I have been challenged and placed in higher level courses). I have not been unjustly stopped by the police, pulled over for “appearing suspicious”, or pulled over at all, despite my mediocre-at-best driving. I do, though, again, unlike people of color, have the experience of seeing actors, actresses, newscasters, and comedians of my self-perceived/biologically inherited race every time I turn on a television. I also have the privilege to enter into every situation where I am meeting new white people without fear that my race will cause me to be seen unfavorably. Discrimination based on my perceived race is, for me, rare enough to be surprising, and is always easily mitigated by some sort of clarification, such as a picture of my white parents or an emphasis on aspects of white culture I hold native familiarity with. I am glad that I seem to appear as a safe person, a known member, to many people of color. There are not enough safe spaces and safe people in this world for people of color. Appearing as “something brown,” I am assumed to have a shared knowledge and therefore a shared ability to engender solidarity. This basis of trust allows me to be an advocate, to help people, to operate as a go-between for people of color and white people when need be. Looking brown makes me more approachable and accessible and allows me to connect with strangers in public places, and I am grateful. I am concerned, however, that this basis of relationship is undeserved. The last thing that I want to do is “play” at being a person of color -- I have not experienced the hardships of living in the United States as a non-white individual. This concern that my experience of being perceived as a person of color is undeserved highlights something in our society -- that people of color and white people do in fact experience the world differently. People of color share a common experience that white people do not, and that experience causes them to operate together in a particular manner -- a manner in which I am often included. I have not, however, paid the common cost of being a person of color that confers this familiarity. I have all of this privilege; a privilege that can more accurately be named as the white oppression from which it comes. If I gain the few things that are of specific benefit to people of color in our world – namely camaraderie and acknowledgement – it does not make the scale of privilege slightly less unbalanced, as it does for people of color, but tips a scale already strongly in my favor even steeper my direction. My ambiguous appearance allows me to regularly receive positive treatment from almost everyone -- the people who identify me as white treat me with the privileges of my dominant race, and the people of color who identify me as another person of color treat me with particular kindness and grace, looking out for me. In a messed-up sense, I get the best of both worlds, and that’s even more unfair than the already extremely unfair racial system in the United States. Some of the subtext of the “black nod” and its other iterations is a recognition of shared history, an “I know what you’re going through right now.” I exchange these nods with people of color, and I try always to be aware of my privileges and biases when interacting with people of color, but I do not have this shared history. Do I lie, then, in acknowledging it by the implicit context of these interactions? Or is what I acknowledge an understanding of history and culture, race and identity, on a larger scale? Because that, at least, is something that I have studied in classrooms and sought to understand in conversations. What I can truthfully be, and what I hope and want to be, is what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “The White Friend Who Gets It.” The person “who you don’t need to explain shit to… [who] can say stuff that you can’t.” What I am currently seeking to understand is how my appearance and the regular misconception of my race plays into this. I will continue to accept my undeserved social position as “sometimes perceived as a person of color” because if I reject this role, ignore the nods, and refuse to accept incredible kindness, the net result is snubbing people of color because they are people of color, and that’s a horrific thing which I am not ever going to do. Beyond this, it also results in denying a fellow human a point of connection in this world, and that’s wrong even if we did live in a magical world where racism did not exist. If I can create a sense of recognition and safety for another human being, a human being who is regularly looked down on and discriminated against, then it is my duty and my joy to provide that; to create that space in a silent and momentary relationship between us. That is my blessing, to give and to receive. That is my nod. ************ To my fellow white people, then, let me speak about your nod. People of color need more safe spaces in this world (if you don’t believe me, you’ve got some reading to do -- see links at the bottom of this post) and you can help create and foster them. Here are some practical steps to get you started: Be Aware You don’t know what it is like to be a person of color, but you can read books and articles that show you more of what it is like to be a person of color (again, see links at the bottom of this post). Do that.Then, take the knowledge you gain forward into your everyday interactions. Try to pay attention to your own implicit biases, anticipate them, and move to correct them. Don’t try to be color blind, because it actually perpetuates racism. Instead, be aware of your own race and culture, your racial assumptions, and those assumptions that may belong to the person with whom you are speaking. Act accordingly, and act in grace and love. Be Kind Due to implicit bias, people of color aren’t treated nearly as well as white people. They struggle to get a table at a restaurant, they can’t catch a cab, and generally receive poor customer service. So, go out of your way to be nice to people of color. If your actions toward people of color are above and beyond typical, they’re likely to be nearing the treatment white people generally receive. Recognize also that people of color are not accustomed to receiving positive treatment from white people. They may be defensive, and rightfully so. Go out of your way to reassure them: smile a lot, be gracious, make dumb puns -- whatever is well intentioned and effective for putting people at ease. Help diminish the imbalance. Call Out Racism and Xenophobia As a white person, people will listen to you. Use your platform, call people out, use your power and privilege to stand up to people who are acting unjustly towards people of color. Say something. Don’t be a passive bystander who goes home later and posts on Facebook about being appalled. That’s not helpful. Be the White Friend Who Gets It. Talk To Your Fellow White People You can say things to fellow white people that people of color can’t easily bring up due to -- you guessed it -- racism. Use your voice and cultural understanding of whiteness to bring about change. Challenge your friends when they make racial comments, talk to your family about why that thing they said isn’t okay. Speak up. Bottom Line: be aware, be kind, be active. Take an active role in your education. Do your own research, starting here: NPR’s Code Switch, a podcast and accompanying articles on race and identity. The Berkeley Student Cooperative rundown on safe spaces and how to create them. This OSU center, if you’re looking for more scholarly resources. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk. Carol Anderson’s White Rage. This post full of links to articles you should read. This list of reading recommendations for better understanding the Native American experience. This list of reading recommendations for better understanding race and racial experience. This list of things that white allies should read. |
Rebecca Rose“There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.” Archives
March 2017
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