Quote:
Originally Posted by Maru
The way she spoke then for that time would've been perfectly acceptable, I think. More than acceptable even? Especially in the South where I grew up and now live.
I'm not surprised the young girl wasn't booty-tickled, as indignation was not nearly as common of a personal trait around even that time. At least not in the average America. I'm not counting some of the kids living in the streets of New York, basically. We knew that was a different breed.
Admittedly that clip reminded me of an event that was very similar, but worse, so that was a bit triggering. Though it's not about the point of view or what was said. I would not have had a problem with how Maya phrased it. Though I'm not sure what else the girl was meant to do but stand there and take that...
I even think what she says here is valuable. However, I also know my experiences with that mindset often reaped people who more likely than not were some of the most emotionally weak and emotionally unintelligent people I'd come across. Individuals who had an almost pathological ability to avoid self-accountability. So I tend to associate these views with incredibly stubborn people used to getting their way and also people who associate their age with "having status" rather than denoting experience. I think that distinction is important as Maya is indicating to the latter? There's also the fact that during her time there was a reciprocal effect (more on that later).
I'd like to think as still a young person (I'm 41) it's better to strive to adapt to criticisms with higher self-expectations. However, there's also the conflict in me that where often doing the opposite had gotten me further than just sitting there passively waiting for someone to treat myself and others more fairly. So society doesn't always reflect the world as Maya is portraying here. However, I do think if we could return to a time where at least there was a distance between generations that made far more sense than what it is now, we would very likely be better off.
For example, in the times of my grandmother there was a reciprocal. Young people listened more, but also adults did more to accommodate their growth as individuals. Yes, you don't cross Mama, but it's not like what she saying occurred in a vacuum. There were communities behind these generational relationships and beliefs. A person at a young age received all kinds of unsolicited advice (sometimes often bad) but they had more adults that were emotionally available to help them to weigh what they heard. So there was more emotional assistance from adults to show where the advice was really coming from and that it wasn't always coming from a counterproductive source.
Now most people won't even bother to look up from their phones during even critical life events and it can be said we are increasingly becoming avoidant as a society in our interactions. There was more patience and communication between people as well from the time even when I was younger. Now everything has to have a correction immediately involved (or else!) and if not a verbal duel or battle of wills must occur at times to reach the best possible conclusion more quickly. Most people would stay out of this because much of how people coexist and relate to one another doesn't have any backing or common sense to it. There increasingly isn't an understanding of even basic societal or moral expectations. So there are far many more people shouting that they deserve an important place in society versus with no evidence of such. Imo, that's not coming from a place of self-respect or implied dignity as she is suggesting, but rather a place of childishness.
There's other areas of confusion as sheriff said. For example, it's incredibly rare to use honorifics in America even when addressing others in even a professional setting when it should really be the norm. I don't think this is a good thing at all because it confuses relationships. An insurance company that calls me by my first name is not more likely to be fairer to me. So why are we on that basis when it's money we're talking about and not intimate personal feelings?
Also, how long do we keep up pretending to have familiarity with one another by using first names and throwing around labels specificailly designed to prioritize individuality when many people can't even manage eye contact. So I think that creates so much confusion with young people (and myself) as well as others, because they don't know how to treat others, much less what they're deserving to be treated as... older generations did NOT have this problem.
Maya at least points out a standard and while it's not a common one now, it's explicit in expression. However, what did get me is where she saying she is akin to this young woman's grandmother which is equally like sharing intimacy. I get that's cultural, but for many people that's very confusing in a world where many adults with those titles don't even hold those roles as precious anymore. And many young people increasingly are often not even given the simple basic respect of eye contact or detailed thoughts by adults, but certainly tons of judgement about what they can and can't do.
So while I don't think that her way of thinking could hold up in modern times, it was clear she is an adequate role model. That says something. Meanwhile in overall society, where we seem to be screaming to the clouds about how familiar we feel with others around us while not even looking each other in the eye most times... it's a bit crazy to even consider Maya could look like the crazy one here, when many more people are shouting at people like brick walls incredibly personal advice to each other on Tiktok, etc, without considerable social blow back. It's just understood to be the new "raised by the village". And yes, that village sucks.
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There’s a lot of cultural context beneath the lines, like I was implying. In black culture as a whole, you just don’t refer to people significantly older than you by their first name. It’s not just generational. In black (and I presume certain Asian) communities, it’s still the done thing. I’ve explained why I think Maya went in way, way, way too hard but part of my point was that it’s a cultural expectation no less than just generational, in the way it applies to white people. In certain West African cultures, the culture dictates, like I said, that you prostrate/kneel before elders in some circumstances, even in 2026. In any case, anyone 20+ years older than you is auntie or uncle (at the very least) by default when you’re talking to them directly, eyeball-to-eyeball, which isn’t even what that poor girl in the video was doing. She comes across as a polite, diffident, humble, naturally-slightly-nervous girl (now a grown woman working in education and a foster-parent, as I understand it) who made a minor blunder in a crowd full of social absorption. An innocent mistake. Yet some people don’t want to let her live it down even 36 years on and say she shouldn’t be working in education because she made a slip of the tongue on live TV as a young teenager.
For some people it’ll be ego of the age they’re growing into as they get older, thinking they’ve earned enough stripes in chronological age to use that as an excuse to slag off millennials/Gen.-Zs (as people do), but this girl’s now a 40-something-year-old woman, if not even half a century old at this point. She’s older than some of the people who’ve slagged her off over the years by now. That’s why I like to bask in my own light than in someone-else’s shadow. Unless you outline Methuselah, age per-se is always relative. There’ll always be someone out there who’s older than you and feels like they have more general life-experience than you. But at what age can someone become old enough to pass the scrutiny of relative infantilisation and stand side-by-side true elders in that respect? Certainly not before 45-50, which is firmly the age-bracket where that young lady is now. She’s a bonafide Gen-X at the very least, not a Gen-Alpha TikTok-whatever-whoever that some people are using as a framework to judge her from, even-though this clip is literally 35 years old. She’s no kid at this point, and a minor blunder out of polite nervousness doesn’t have the weighting on her character some people seem to think it does, as-if those people haven’t made worse mistakes. As-if we don’t all make mistakes. Again, it’s good to ow your own stripes at any age, based on things (unique/niche experiences, cultural seasoning and layers, intelligence, skills, resilience in spite of what life’s thrown at you at any age) that you’re uniquely versed in. Compared to someone who lived through the Cold War directly or fought in the Biafran war barefoot and starving, days after their dad passed away from pneumonia after staying out all night to keep watch over his family while the opposing army intrudes, and went on to be a captain in the maritime world, some 30-something-year-old wannabe-alpha-male (ugh) who thinks having a Bugatti (or the latest flavour-of-the-month car) and a few £20 notes to flash from Bitcoin and insists it’s gay to eat bananas, or breakfast at-all, is still very-much a baby in the grand scheme of things. A little boy who’s probably wanted for nothing trying to be a big man. The true elder’s laughing over wholewheat toast and spearmint tea. I’m not saying you need extreme life-experiences to be considered someone truly seasoned in age or (general) experience, but there’ll always be that contrast with people who truly, truly senior the average person alive. A relative. So I don’t even go there with trying to impose stripes based on age alone, as someone under 45, who’s been surrounded by people who survived much harsher circumstances with much less technology and support to boot. I do like to think I have my own stripes, ngl, but they’re not age or chronology related. They can’t be. I’m not long enough in the tooth for that and I don’t pretend otherwise. I accept my chronological limitations and what they mean on paper. So people under a certain age trying to form big in-general rather than just in specific relation to people younger than them make me laugh. Being arrogant and abrasive about age when I’m not truly an elder-elder in that sense is … really not my style.
And I think that’s where people who are deeply introverted naturally have an edge. When you’re that introverted, you likely have a very strong sense of individuality, personal identity and being your own person, wanting to be recognised for who you truly are on a more unique level than generic social-ladder metrics which never stop until you’re truly old or truly richer than Elon Musk, or whoever. So I personally would just narrow down my stripes until I’ve truly lived the best part of half a century. Until then, being 20-or-30-something (or even 43) is nothing to particularly brag about. It’s still very young in the grand scheme of things. Chronology alone is a weak foundation to anchor legitimacy on when you’re still under a certain age. That’s why I always pivot back to things like niches, resilience, cultural memory, skill, individuality and lived specificity - like the cultural layers you experience being of a certain ethnic fold, or at-least adjacent to it in real and lived ways, and things that come with it, for better or worse, which no pure white person can ever fully understand, no-matter how old they are. That’s unique to the relevant people, whether they’re 8 or 107. Having misophonia since the age of 9 or 13 and having to fiercely self-advocate in a system that has no standardised acknowledgment of the condition (by way of diagnosis or official treatment) as-of yet in a world where other people’s problems are common and broad enough to be standardised in a way that lets them put blind faith in the system instead of having to be their own expert from jump. Likewise for experiencing what it’s like to be a woman or on the LGBT-spectrum. A straight man’s never going to know what it’s like from the inside out, whether they’re 68, 30 or on par with David Attenborough and almost too old to technically play with Lego. It doesn’t matter. Those are specific things that no-one can take away from you coming from a place of general hierarchical markers. Everyone has experiences that are more unique to them and people like them. The rat-race of general experience is more age-contingent. There’s a difference. And one’s a more unique basis to anchor individual identity on, especially when you’re not even veritably middle-aged, let-alone a true senior. I’m not saying all this to make a case for going in (in the face-to-face world) with disrespect of people much older than you who haven’t given you a reason to withdraw that respect (which can just as likely be the case) but I’m pinning it to this case because no-doubt there’ll be people in their 30s vilifying this poor girl because their ego would be bruised at this point if some kid accidentally referred to them by their first name. I can understand when you’re a bit further in the tooth-game or when the youngster’s being blatantly and intentionally disrespectful but crapping on young people, even the most well-behaved ones who get rewarded for it in Sunday-school, is just something every generation does when they get to a certain age. “Kids these days” is like a ringtone that existed centuries before ’phones were even a thing but in this specific context, when the girl intended nothing other than politeness and humility, I’d expect you to be pretty long in the tooth before you start defending not just what Maya Angelou said (which is different; I understand that, especially considering the cultural context) but the way she said it and then going on to make assumptions about her character and the kind of jobs she should be doing nearly 40 years later. Kim’s no younger than those Gen-X/early-millennial staunch critics now, so the complaint about “kids these days” being exemplified from her is totally moot. They’re not that generationally far apart even you consider how many decades that clip’s from. The girl didn’t freeze in time and stay 14 for 36 years. She can collect her pension in ten years if she really wants to.
I’m not saying any of this to contradict what you per-se are saying, don’t get me wrong. Your post was really interesting and I sat with it for a while. I’m just using it, at the same time, as a bump to make a general point. And maybe to just make that point about culture transcending generational differences in contexts like this, but, again, that only goes so far as a reflection of the people themselves. You’re not suddenly less likely to get involved in crime, to drop out from education or be a dickish person just because you don’t challenge nominal conventions when addressing elders. It’s just what people do, just like using your right hand whenever you accept anything from elders, even if it’s just a slice of cake from an intimate auntie; your mum’s best friend, which is a convention that, likewise; used to be more-or-less worldwide but still persists with more conscious intentionality in certain cultural/ancestral frameworks. Doesn’t mean you don’t respect left-handed/ambidextrous people. You might be a leftie yourself. It’s just about following a script to keep the peace. And forgetting the convention and accidentally losing your left hand once or twice (maybe not even twice) in that context is no more a reflection of your respectfulness/intentions in and around that or the way your parents brought you up than accidentally referring to an elder by their first name when an interview-host collects a question from you in a space where everyone-else seems to be on first-name terms with her.
Was Maya Angelou too harsh with this young girl?
…Maya Angelou did clarify that there was no criticism or blame other than how we are all taught….
…imo from all interactions we saw…
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