Stop Judging "Boomers"

The Center for Human Equality in Oregon stands firmly against every form of group judgmentalism. Whether directed at race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or generation, collective condemnation of individuals based on shared demographic traits dehumanizes people and erodes the foundational dignity of the human person.

Today, we address a particularly insidious and increasingly normalized prejudice: the blanket denigration of Baby Boomers as a group. Labeling an entire generation—roughly those born between 1946 and 1964—as selfish, out-of-touch, economically greedy, or culturally obsolete is not harmless banter. It is a moral failing equivalent in principle to racism or antisemitism. Both reduce complex human beings to crude caricatures and substitute lazy groupthink for ethical judgment of individuals.

Group judgmentalism operates through the same psychological and rhetorical mechanisms regardless of the target. It deindividuates. It strips away personal agency, character, choices, and circumstances, replacing them with a monolithic stereotype. A person is no longer John or Mary—parents, workers, veterans, artists, or neighbors with unique life stories—but simply "a Boomer."

This shorthand dismisses their contributions, struggles, and moral worth in one sweeping gesture. History warns us of the consequences. When societies accept that entire categories of people can be collectively blamed or scorned, atrocities follow. The Holocaust, chattel slavery, ethnic cleansings, and cultural revolutions all began with the intellectual acceptance that some groups were inherently problematic, burdensome, or morally defective.

While anti-Boomer rhetoric has not yet produced violence on that scale, it shares the same corrosive logic: the denial that every human being possesses irreducible individuality.Ethical individualism stands as the antidote. This principle holds that moral worth, responsibility, and judgment must attach to persons as individuals, not as avatars of demographic cohorts.

Each human life is defined by personal decisions, virtues, flaws, and contexts—not by birth year, skin color, or ancestry. To praise or condemn someone primarily because they belong to a generational cohort violates this axiom. A young person who works hard, raises a family, pays taxes, and treats others with respect deserves admiration regardless of when they were born. Conversely, an individual who behaves selfishly or irresponsibly merits criticism on the basis of their actions, not their age bracket.

Lumping millions together under "Boomers ruined the economy" or "OK Boomer" as a dismissal of legitimate perspectives ignores the vast diversity within that generation—progressives and conservatives, innovators and traditionalists, the wealthy and the working class, the kind and the cruel.

This prejudice has become distressingly common in political discourse and cultural commentary. Pundits, social media influencers, and even elected officials casually deploy "Boomer" as a slur implying entitlement, environmental recklessness, or resistance to necessary change. Such language would be instantly recognized as unacceptable if applied to any racial or religious minority.

We do not tolerate blanket statements like "Millennials are all lazy" without pushback in polite society, yet generational scapegoating of older Americans often passes without challenge. This inconsistency reveals the selective nature of contemporary equity rhetoric. True equality demands consistency: if group-based condemnation is wrong for protected classes, it is wrong for everyone.

The Center for Human Equality rejects the notion that some groups are fair game for collective insult while others are shielded. Human dignity is universal or it is meaningless. The Baby Boomer generation, like every other, contains both profound achievements and regrettable failures. They witnessed and often drove technological revolutions, expanded civil rights in important ways, built economic prosperity that benefited subsequent generations, and raised families under the shadow of the Cold War.

Many continue to work into their later years, volunteer in communities, and support younger relatives. Painting them uniformly as villains ignores these realities and fosters unnecessary intergenerational resentment. Younger generations face genuine challenges—housing costs, student debt, cultural fragmentation—but attributing these primarily to the moral failings of "Boomers" is both factually simplistic and ethically lazy.

Solutions to societal problems require nuanced policy debate among individuals, not tribal warfare between age cohorts. We therefore call upon all politicians, journalists, commentators, and citizens of Oregon and the nation to abandon "Boomer" as a term of collective derision. Just as responsible voices refuse to traffic in racial or religious stereotypes, they should reject generational ones.

Let us model a higher standard: evaluate ideas on their merits, hold individuals accountable for their conduct, and recognize the unique story each person carries. Public discourse gains nothing from lazy generalizations and loses the moral clarity that ethical individualism provides.

The Center for Human Equality affirms that every American—Boomer, Millennial, Gen Z, or otherwise—deserves to be seen and judged as an individual endowed with inherent dignity. Group judgmentalism, in all its forms, diminishes us all. By rejecting it, we uphold the principles of a free and humane society where character, not cohort, defines the person. Oregon, and America, can do better.

Let us begin today.