America, time to meet Generation Inspiration

Tired of politics as usual?

Worn out by all of the hyperpartisan hostility, mud-slinging and fearmongering? Weary of looking for ways to lower the volume on vitriol and raise the level of discourse?

Hold on. Generation Inspiration is coming of age at just the right time.

“My name is Quintin Griffin and I live to promote positive change and growth in my community,” the Overton High senior said Monday evening.

Quintin was introducing himself to hundreds of us who attended the annual benefit dinner for Facing History and Ourselves.

He is student body president at Overton. “I do my best daily to secure the general welfare for students in my school,” he said.

He’s the Cadet Command Sergeant Major in Overton’s Army J.R.O.T.C. Program.

“I help to model the idea that every student should do their share as good citizens in their school, community, country, and the world.”

He’s also a member of America’s newest, most diverse — and, any day now, it’s largest — generation.

They haven’t settled on a label yet. Post-millennials. Generation Z. The iGeneration.

I’m calling them Generation Inspiration. The more I hear from them, the more hopeful and inspired I become.

The oldest among them turned 20 this year. Nearly all of them are teenagers or younger. Their world is full of technology and diversity.

Nearly all of them are digital natives. They’ve never known a time without Google or Facebook or Skype.

Nearly half of them are minorities. They are the largest multiracial generation in U.S. history and the first majority multicultural generation.

“The convergence of technology and ethnic diversity helps create a group that is entirely fluid and playful, and where identity is a highly nuanced concept,” Forbes magazine explained earlier this year.

“This overwhelming diversity will impact:

» “How they communicate (more opportunity to be bi/trilingual with parents from different ethnicities).

» “How they get along with others (greater opportunity for acceptance/

comfort).

» “How they see the world (fewer boundaries, moving away from an “us” vs “them”).”

Those are lessons they grew up learning.

“Being a young, African-American female, there was always this stigma held over my head that I, and my siblings, were uneducated and ghetto,” Kam Johnson, another Overton High senior, told us Monday evening.

“There was this idea that, because of the color of my skin, I could only go so far in life. No one looked at the fact that my mother is a teacher, on her way to getting a Master’s degree, and my father is a well-known, well-respected preacher with a Master’s degree who has preached all over the world.”

That revelation led to another. While she felt judged, she was judging others.

“I saw my family as an exception to the stereotypes placed on African Americans because I come from a middleclass, educated family,” Kam said.

“What I didn’t realize was that by viewing my family as an exception, I was only confirming the false stereotypes assigned to African Americans.”

Members of Generation Inspiration don’t seem to fear a world that’s expanding as rapidly as it’s contracting.

They hold the world in the palms of their hands.

The world lives right next door or just down the hall.

Amal Altareb, a junior at Central High, was the third student who spoke Monday evening.

She was born in America to Muslim parents who moved back to Yemen when she was 1. She lived there until seventh grade, when they all moved to Memphis.

She covered her head and opened her mind and heart. Language was her first challenge. “Not understanding a word the teacher was saying made me upset. But it also made me stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. to translate every word in the book,” Amal said. Identity was her next challenge. “One question that I struggled with the most was: What does it mean to be an American?” she told us.

“Does being born in the U.S. make me an American? What if I was born here, live here now, and still feel like a stranger?

“Can I still call myself a Yemeni even if I was not born there and even if I don’t have the Yemeni passport? So, where do I belong?

“At first I thought that I had to be either an American or a Yemeni, but now I think I can be a beautiful mixture of both.”

Generation Inspiration is a beautiful mixture of all Americans — Native and African, European and Latin, Asian and Israeli and Arab.

They are the first generation of truly global Americans.

“The students you heard tonight are what the world needs right now,” Magda Sakaan, an ESL teacher at Treadwell Elementary and Facing History alum, told us Monday evening. The world will have to wait just a bit. Quintin, Kam and Amal aren’t 18 yet. This will be the last presidential election we have without them.

They will be able to vote in the next presidential election in 2020.

That’s an encouraging date. We could use a new, more hopeful, more inspiring vision for American politics.